The Felicity-Franklin Middle School student engineering team captured third place and five special awards at the 2008 National Engineer’s Week Future City Ohio Region Competition.

The state competition, held in Columbus Jan. 19, attracted more than 30,000 students in 1,100 middle schools in 38 regions nationwide this year.

The four-student contingent representing Felicity-Franklin/Ohio region was only one of 44 Ohio middle school teams that conceptualized, designed, engineered, and constructed a city of the future.

The annual state competition provides seventh and eighth graders the unique opportunity to be creative in designing and building a city of the future using SimCity software, which was donated by Maxis, a computer software company in California.