Batavia Middle School’s eighth-grade gifted Language Arts class earned second place at the statewide Future City Engineering Competition earlier this year.
As part of the competition, which was held January 12 in Columbus, the students designed a city set 150 years in the future in Papua New Guinea, named Tumora.
Students were tasked with developing a resilient power grid for their city that could withstand and quickly recover from the impacts of a natural disaster, explained Mary Bradburn, who teaches gifted language arts to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders at Batavia Middle School.
The student city planners were students Ayla Brasfield, Logan Brose, Christian Conner, Lucas Denney, Kyler Fritz, N’diah Lowe, Liz Reardon, Bronwynn Shaffer and Emma Wallace.
Student speakers Morgan Benter, Molly Smith and Ryan Kelly represented the group during its presentation, which included a skit based on the movie “Ghostbusters.”
Laura Michalske, a bioengineer at Procter & Gamble, and Joe Phelps, helped provide support to the students.
This is the 15th year that the middle school has participated in the competition. In two of those years, the team has earned first place and advanced to the national competition in Washington D.C.
“It’s such a great learning opportunity, and even more so for my girls, because engineering has so many different components, and through this program, they’re able to realize what engineering really means; that it touches all aspects of your life,” Bradburn said, adding, “There’s so much writing, and so much research, and many real world connections for them, it’s awesome.”
Benter attributed the groups success to thorough researching and teamwork.
“We researched in smaller groups and then came back together and put our ideas together,” she explained, adding that one of her favorite parts of the competition was connecting with the audience during the presentation.
Smith used her experience growing up in Clermont County, and the area’s proclivity to flooding, as she worked through the competition.
One of her favorite part of the competition was planning all of the small details.
“The amount of creativity we had to use to put together all of these ideas; and building the model, which was all handmade,” she added.
Kelly’s favorite part of the competition was how it weaved engineering into every element, including the writing portion.
He also enjoyed coming up with ideas and cooperating as a group.
Benter and Kelly agreed that the competition solidified their interest in pursuing a career in engineering, and Smith said the experience made her want to take a closer look at the field.
Batavia Middle School’s eighth-grade gifted Language Arts class earned second place at the statewide Future City Engineering Competition earlier this year. Pictured are the students that competed, along with their support team. Photo provided.
Batavia Middle School’s eighth-grade gifted Language Arts class earned second place at the statewide Future City Engineering Competition earlier this year. Pictured are some of the students from the team. Photo provided.