January 11, 2005

Idaho Students Gather On Boise State Campus On Saturday For First Future City Competition Ever Held In State

Seventh and eighth grade students from more than a dozen Idaho schools will gather at Boise State University on Saturday for the first regional Future City Competition held in Idaho since the national design contest began in 1992.   In Future City, students design a city using SimCity software and develop the city to at least the year 2150, first on the computer and then in large tabletop models. Students work in teams with a teacher and volunteer engineer mentor. They must also write a city abstract and an essay on engineering to solve an important social need.   Until this year, Idaho students traveled to Seattle to compete in the competition.   The theme for this year’s competition is “How can futuristic transportation systems efficiently use aggregate materials – crushed stone, sand, and gravel – as a basic construction product?”   The top three winning schools will receive awards, and students will receive T-shirts and certificates. The competition in Boise is sponsored by the Idaho Society of Professional Engineers, the Boise State College of Engineering, the Southern Idaho section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Eastern Idaho Council of Engineering and the Boise section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.   For more information on the Boise State competition, contact Leandra Aburusa in the College of Engineering at 426-4432 or email her at laburusa@boisestate.edu. -30-   Contact: Leandra Aburusa, College of Engineering, (208) 426-4432, laburusa@boisestate.edu Media Contact: Margaret Scott, College of Engineering, (208) 426-5789, MargaretScott@boisestate.edu, or Janelle Brown, communications and marketing, (208) 426-1790, jbrown2@boisestate.edu Online at: http://news.boisestate.edu.