of urban areas by participating in the regional portion of the Future City Competition.
Held at Northeastern University the weekend of January 25, the Lafayette middle school students
completed a project addressing the theme of the competition — transportation. The Future City
Competition is a national, project-based learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th
grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. Students work as a team with an educator
and engineer mentor to plan cities using SimCity™ software; research and write solutions to an
engineering problem; build tabletop scale models with recycled materials; and present their
ideas before judges at Regional Competitions in January. Back row, from left: Michelina Tumblin,
Ms. Uminski, Adrian Rodriguez, Andres Gomez, Dimitri Abraham, Thokmey Dorjee, Cristian Alas,
Ali Alananzeh, and Calvin Tran. Front row, from left: Max Ruggiero, Anne Souza, Marcos DeAguiar,
Eric Souza, Nicholas Howe, Kunchok Khabnay, Musa Bittaye, Alex McBride, and Ida Bittaye.