On January 13, 2018, while many members of the CHP family celebrated our well deserved Blue Ribbon Award, six students in the eighth grade put their best foot forward at the Future City Competition. The entire eighth grade was challenged both creatively and intellectually with the task to design, create, and plan an “age friendly” city, with two innovative engineering solutions to assist senior citizens. Sounds simple enough….NOT SO! First, significant research and creativity was required to imagine engineering solutions that were not only innovative, but also conceivably achievable in the near future. Each team then had to build a city using Sim City software to learn the intricacies and logistics of city planning. Next, their language arts skills were put to use, writing an essay detailing the specifics of their town, including location, population, describing their engineering innovations, and (most importantly) explaining why! Finally, each team built a model of their city, utilizing predominantly recyclable materials, with only a $100 budget for any additional materials. At the Regional Future City competition in Rutgers University one of our teams won the THE AWARD FOR MOST SUSTAINABLE CITY!! Kudos to all the students for their effort and presentation.
