Westlake High School Wins 2024 Prestigious High School STEM Competition–Future City
Washington, DC, February 20, 2024 –Ampere, engineered by students from Westlake High School, Austin, TX– has won the Grand Prize at the inaugural international DiscoverE 2024 Future City® High School Competition. The students – Arnav, Arya, Aditya, Miranda – teamed with Coach Taryna Patel to earn the top honors.
Brand new this year, Future City launched a high school program. This was Future City High School’s Pilot Year – 19 teams, comprising almost 100 students from across the U.S. and Nigeria participated. DiscoverE’s Future City High School program engages 9th-12th grade students in imagining, researching, designing, and building cities of the future. Emphasizing the engineering design process and project management, students collaborate in teams, led by Coaches, to create an essay and design a VR/AR model showcasing a sustainable city solving the annual challenge, this year’s theme – Electrify Your Future. With a focus on career exploration, building and maintaining STEM skills, and studying sustainable technologies, Future City High School culminates in a live presentation in front of a panel of STEM professionals.
The High School cash prizes and scholarship money are all sponsored by NCEES (National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying).
Westlake High School from Austin, TX takes home the Grand Prize of $3,500 cash prize for its school’s STEM program and a scholarship package of $10,000 per student, up to $50,000 total per team.
Second place went to Sharing Adventures In Learning (SAIL) in Allen, TX. Sharing Adventures In Learning (SAIL) earned honors for its city VIRIDIS. Their organization receives a $2,500 cash prize for its STEM program.
Morriston – engineered by the Grosse Pointe South High School in Grosse Pointe Park, MI, took third place honors. Their program receives a $1,500 cash prize for its STEM program.
Fourth place went to Herculaneum High School from Herculaneum, MO, for their city, Dealan. This school receives a $1,500 cash prize for their organization’s STEM program.
One of the nation’s leading engineering education programs and among the most popular, Future City is accessible to every student. The Future City competition recognizes the importance of inclusion and emphasizes participation from all students, male and female, all races and ethnicities and all economic levels. Participants come from middle schools and high schools, both public and private, can be home-schooled and can also be members of a nationally, regionally, or state-recognized youth-focused organization, such as the Boy and Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, or 4-H Clubs. Last year, 52 percent of the students were female, 39 percent of the students were minority, and 43 percent were low-income students from Title I schools, meaning schools which are federally funded based on the number of students at that school who qualify for free or reduced cost lunch.
Students apply Math and Science to real world problems and 85% of students reported that Future City helped them see Math and Science as important to their future.
Future City® extends its gratitude to major sponsors, including the Bechtel Corporation, Bentley Systems Inc., NCEES, PMIEF, and the Overdeck Family Foundation. The competition is also supported by Linde Engineering, Pentair Foundation, and Shell Energy.
For those passionate about inspiring the next generation of engineers, Future City has ongoing volunteer opportunities.
The Future City® competition is a program of Discover Engineering, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. DiscoverE’s initiatives include Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day™, World Engineering Day, Chats with Changemakers, and outreach for the Cities of the Future and Dream Big films.
For more information on the Future City Competition visit: FutureCity.org or Future City Press Kit
Contacts: Kathy Renzetti, CAE, Executive Director, kathy@DiscoverE.org , 571-467-0354; or Thea Sahr, Deputy Executive Director, thea@DiscoverE.org , 571-467-0356