Published February 18, 2007

Facing the Future
For Second Year in Row, Catholic Schools Win First, Second in Future City Competition

By Ray Dyer
Sooner Catholic

When it comes to planning for the future, students in Catholic schools appear to have an edge, at least when it comes to designing a city of the future. For the fourth consecutive year, students from Saint Philip Neri Catholic School will travel to Washington, D.C. to compete in the National Future City Competition. The team will make the trip after winning the 2007 Oklahoma Regional Future City championship. The annual competition is sponsored by the Association of Engineers and for the second year in a row, the team from Sacred Heart Catholic School in Oklahoma City finished second in the prestigious contest.

Approximately two dozen schools from central Oklahoma took part in the competition. The regional finals, featuring teams from 13 schools, were held Jan. 25 at Oklahoma Christian University during National Engineers Week.

Representatives from the Saint Philip Neri team will travel to Washington, D.C. for the Feb. 19-21 National Finals.

The contest requires each team to produce the following:

•A computer city built using SimCity 3000.

•A 500-word abstract describing the city  Top: A Close-up of the winning city. Bottom: The state champion Future City team from              they have created.
Saint Philip Neri School in Midwest City.                                                                                     

•A 700-word essay on an assigned engineering topic — “Develop an energy strategy to include fuel cell systems to power a city of the future.”

•Build a scale model of part of your city that is no larger than 50 inches by 25 inches by 20 inches.

•Select three team members that will present a five- to seven- minute presentation describing the city.

•The three team members will also respond to five to seven minutes of questions from the judges.

Sue Hawkins and Monica Schmidlkofer were the Saint Philip Neri teachers who coordinated the project for the winning team, while math and science teacher Anna Arias led the Sacred Heart team in the competition. Each team is made up of seventh- and eighth- grade students and is assisted by mentors. For Saint Philip Neri, the mentors were Wayne Recla, an electrical engineer, and Larry Hopper, a city planner. The Sacred Heart team was mentored by Roger Hall and Terry Brown, engineers who work for Boeing. Brown is also a graduate of Sacred Heart.

In honor of the Oklahoma Centennial, the Saint Philip Neri team created the city of “Soqua Vdodi Elohi — a Cherokee name meaning “one with the earth.”

Hawkins said the team decided to celebrate Oklahoma’s birthday in another 100 years — 2107. The city reflects Oklahoma City being renamed to reconnect with Oklahoma’s American Indian heritage. The model shows both historical Bricktown and numerous futuristic buildings and transportation systems that would be found in the city core 100 years from now.

Arias said the Sacred Heart team chose the name “Astrophere” for its futuristic city. The city is built on an asteroid and features futuristic systems of transportation, communication and energy creation. The team selected a cattle farm in which the methane gas produced by the waste powered the city of “Astrophere.”
                                   The state runner-up Future City team from Sacred Heart School in Oklahoma City.     

Both teams worked extra hours to make their entries champion-ship caliber.

“Our students learned many valuable lessons,” Arias said. “They had to combine creativity, logic, scales for math and engineering to create something that turned out simply amazing.”

The Saint Philip Neri team will be represented in Washington, D.C. by presenters Sara Figueroa, Ashley Newburry and Melanie Scherer as well as Hawkins and  Recla. Other team members in-clude Jonathan Fairchild, Stuart Symes, David Crall, Matt Wagner, Melissa Doan, Hannah Govett, Lea Ann Winterstein and Aaron Limon.

The Sacred Heart team in-cludes presenters Rebecca Denny, Cody Woodward and James Niles. Other team members are Jessica Pando, Guadalupe Garcia, Fabien Rojas, Nathaniel Myers-Antiaye, Juan Franco, Josh Morgan and Jesus Carreon.