SOUTHFIELD — The Engineering Society of Detroit is still seeking judges for the Michigan Regional Future City Competition Jan. 26 in Novi and mentors for the Engineering SMArT Michigan competition, taking place from now through May.
In Future City, students in 6th, 7th and 8th grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. The program is designed to engage middle school students’ interest in math, science, and engineering through real-life, practical and hands-on activities. Future City is a cross-curricular educational program where students work as a team with an educator and volunteer mentor to design a city of the future.
On competition day, Jan. 26, the role of the judge is to draw on their expertise to fairly evaluate the team’s models and presentations. A training session is planned for 8 a.m. the morning of the competition. Judging will take place from 9 to 11 a.m. During that time, the teams display their model cities and three representatives from each team give a 5- to 7-seven minute presentation to a panel of judges.
If you are interested in judging, please click here and register. You MUST register at this link to participate as a competition day judge. Please make sure to choose Michigan when asked to choose a region and check that you’d like to serve as a Model and Presentation Judge.
For more information on judging, contact Leslie Smith, CMP, at lsmith@esd.org or (248) 353-0735, ext. 152.
Also sought are mentors for teams in ESD’s Engineering SMArT Michigan Program, which is a rigorous, hands-on science, math, architecture and technology (SMArT) project in which high school students design energy-efficient homes.
Volunteer mentors are a critical element to the success of the program and are needed to help teach and coach in the classroom.
There are two groups of mentors — Energy Module and Presentation Module.
Energy Module mentors are responsible for teaching students about the basics of energy, energy consumption, the electric grid, alternative energies, and energy efficiency.
Presentation Module mentors assist students with implementing what they have learned from the Energy Module mentors. They will teach how to use scale and drafting guidelines, as well as coaching students through their essays and oral presentations. At the end of the Presentation Module, the students’ final project will consist of engineering drawings (site plan, floor plan, section, and elevation), an essay, and an oral presentation for the competition.
The 15-week program gets underway in late January and finishes up in late May at the competition. Energy Module mentors are asked to teach a minimum of one class period per week for two weeks. Presentation Module mentors are assigned to a school and asked to teach a minimum of one class period per week for eight weeks. Efforts will be made to schedule multiple Presentation Module mentors at each school in order to ensure at least one mentor is in the classroom each week. Mentors can volunteer for one or more schools.
For more information on mentoring click here. To volunteer as a mentor, contact Jasmine Sisson, PE, at sisson@pbworld.com.
Class days and times are currently being confirmed. But please contact Jasmine as soon as possible to express your interest so you may receive priority in scheduling.
A training for Energy Module mentors is being planned for Tuesday, Jan. 13 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at ESD Headquarters in Southfield.