C.T. Male Associates Participates in the Capital District Future Cities Competition

C.T. Male Associates is an ongoing supporter of the Capital District Future Cities Competition, which was held on January 10, 2015 at Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady, NY. The Future City Competition is an annual event for local sixth, seventh and eighth grade students that runs from September 2014 until the regional event in January 2015. More than 40,000 students throughout the United States participate in this important program that emphasizes the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) at the middle school level. At the 2015 Capital District Future Cities Competition, 22 teams of students from schools around the Capital Region participated.

The competition is exciting and the futuristic cities that the middle school students develop are both intriguing and revolutionary. C.T. Male Associates supports programs like Future Cities that encourage children to be involved in STEM. Competition teams are judged by panels of volunteer judges on five program deliverables including:

• A Virtual City: Teams must design a city using the latest SimCity software;
• An Essay: Teams must compose a 1,000 word essay which outlines their solution to this year’s topic, the Feeding Future Cities challenge, which  focused on Urban Farming;
• A City Narrative: Using only 500 words, teams must describe their city of the future;
• A Model: With just a $100 budget, teams must build a scaled model of their city using mostly recycled materials and at least one-moving part; and
• A Presentation: In just 7 minutes, teams must impress the judges by showcasing what they’ve learned and what their city is all about.

Four C.T. Male Associates employees participated in the program, including Kathryn Serra, P.E. and Robert Flores, P.E. who are long-time mentors to the Academy of the Holy Names and Coxsackie-Athens Central School District. Jeffrey Marx, P.E. handed out the first-place team award representing ASCE and Engineers Week. Patrick Daunt, E.I.T. participated as a specialty awards judge.

This year’s winning team was from New Lebanon Jr/Sr High School and they will go on to participate in the national competition in Washington D.C. in February.

For more information on the Future Cities program, please visit www.futurecity.org.