St. Francis of Assisi Future City Team,"KIOJIN LIMANI" earned first place on Jan. 21 at the Minnesota Regional Future City Competition at Dunwoody Technical College in Minneapolis.
These students will now have the opportunity to compete in the National Competition at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., Feb. 17-21. Students also earned the "Best Essay" award.
The 11-student team of seventh- and eighth-grade students were tasked with designing a "future city," which included a "distributed network of innovative, multi-use spaces," for this year's theme: "The Power of Public Space."
It's the 11th year St. Francis participated in the five-part competition, which includes portions like an essay and creating a physical model of the plan.
"What I was impressed with was their work ethic, creativity and research," said the team's mentor, Eileen Kennedy-Warrington, noting that the team's design was creative as well as plausible.
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"They looked to the past to understand it, and used it to lead them to the future," she said, noting the team designed their city based on Crete, an island off of Greece.
Students met every weekend, beginning in October, to plan throughout the competition, Kennedy-Warrington said.
The team included: grade 8: Zach Chew, Eric Courneya, Will Creighton, Bryan Folkert, Izzy Mustwillow, Andy Rho, Anthony Vareberg, Aidan Warrington; grade 7: Carolyn Jones, Ellie Meyers and Ryan Sanders. The team mentors are Eileen Warrington, a medical editor, and Michael Schweyen a Minnesota Department of Transportation civil engineer.
