Middle School wins awards at regional science competition

Three teams from the Wilbraham & Monson Academy Middle School earned awards at the 2022 Future City New England Regional competition. Future City is a national science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) program for students in Grades 6-8, with groups designing cities 100 years into the future.

WMA’s Crystal City (Haiti) team not only won an award for the Best All-Around Infrastructure, but most impressively the group earned a trophy for the Outstanding Future City Project Plan. The New Age Delhi (India) team won the Outstanding Waste Management System honor and the New Kanpur (India) team accomplished the same for Best Water Management System. 

WMA holds a 10-week Future City lesson as part of its Grade 7 curriculum. Thirty-five teams participated at the 2022 New England Regional.

Quotes from Mr. Jamie Gouin, Grade 7 Science teacher

On the Crystal City team winning the Outstanding Future City Project Plan Award: “I was very proud of this team. They had some of the most innovative concepts that I’ve seen in the last couple years. They took on a changing task of helping the country of Haiti, creating a linear economy 100 years in the future. Their first task was to create earthquake resistant buildings. They created concrete barriers that were built underground, encompassing each building, to absorb earthquake energy. Next, they reestablished forests. They came up with innovative ideas to generate the common economy and reestablished trade and economy to give stabilization to Haiti. I thought they were very clever.”

On why he feels it's important to participate in the Future City competition: “It is very important to create lessons that engage students in science. Students are taking real-world problems and finding solutions to remedy them by researching, building and competing against other students their age.”  

Quotes from Crystal City member Caroline Maloni ’27

On what she learned by participating in the Future City curriculum: “Future City taught me perseverance. In both the social and design elements of the project, I believe the team gained knowledge that can be used later in life. At the beginning of our work together, before we had a captain, there were often disagreements about design choices. We were forced to talk through our opinions and had to compromise, which brought us together as a team. Later in the project, we had obstacles relating to construction that led to a change in plans, and our team worked through these challenges together. The Crystal City Titans saw Future City through to the end despite the many issues we faced along the way.”

On the Crystal City team winning the Outstanding Future City Project Plan Award: “We all worked hard planning and creating a successful Future City model, each bringing different skills to develop Crystal City.” 

Team rosters (all members of the Class of 2027)

Crystal City: Eoin Cavanaugh, Yejun Lee, Caroline Maloni, John Mulderig, Joseph Prickett, Nathan Presz, Sylvia Tobias

New Age Delhi: Romy Allen-Schubert, Wyatt Cavanaugh, Cameron Chagnon, Juan Herrera, Nathaniel Jasmin, Sophia Salimbas, Dylan Shonak

New Kanpur: Caroline Caban, Austin Hammon, Gretta Marosits, Penny Mathison, Christian Sanchez, Chace Silva, Trevor Trudeau