Holy Apostle students take Future City awards

Members of the St. Petersville team, which took fourth place in the Future City competition, are (from left), Jake Binash, Jake Lubenow and Sebastian Berge.

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 Hats off to 21 Holy Apostles’ students who participated in the recent Wisconsin Regional Future City Competition, held in conjunction with National Engineers Week.

Future City is a program developed for seventh and eighth grade students to help them discover and foster interests in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, referred to as STEM. For many of these students, this is the first time for them to hear about these egineering societies and companies.

Devoting their fall semester in preparation -- under the direction of their teacher, Lisa Laabs -- really paid off.  Students returned with six awards.

A fourth place trophy was awarded for the city of St. Petersville and its team members, Sebastian Berge, Jake Lubenow and Jake Binach. They also received five Barnes & Nobel gift certificates, courtesy of Engineers & Scientists of Milwaukee (ESM) Educational Initiative sponsors. All teams received participation certificates, medals and t-shirts.

Other Holy Apostles participants were Jessica Robach, Rachel Fiedler and Kate Nieberle for their city, Bulle -- Joe Jeruc, Jake VonRueden and Gradyn Lentz for the city of Calville -- and Courtney Wenzel, Merideth Braza and Hannah Kinzer for the city of Concordancia.

Also participating were Courtney Nennig, Taylor Wendt and Stephanie McArthur for the city of Hyperville -- Elizabeth Alesci, Amber Krueger and Maddie Nikna for the city of Nueva Berlina -- and John Anderson, Bryan Olson and Joe Tadych for Striker City.

Other awards went to Striker City for best freight transportation network, and to Hyperville for best use of recycled materials. Bulle and Calville were among four cities named for exemplary model. Bulle also was awarded as most futuristic city and Calville received the project planning award.

This was the 19^th annual Future City competition. Over 100 students, who formed 35 teams, came from 14 Wisconsin schools. The first place team, from St. Mary Parish School in Hales Corners, will compete in the National Future City competition in Washington D.C. during National Engineers Week, Feb. 14 – 20. They will compete against approximately 40 other regions across the U.S.

Joyce Dimmer of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, served as a mentor to the Holy Apostles' teams. Representatives from various engineering societies and local firms served as judges, including New Berlin resident Mark Juds of Eaton Corp.