Our
Lady Help of Christians students’ model city is a winner
By Lou Baldwin
Special to The CS&T
ABINGTON — Welcome to Port Tranquility, population 91,000. It takes
its name from the Sea of Tranquility where Neil Armstrong stepped onto
the moon.
Actually, it is not there, exactly. It lies, theoretically, about 600
kilometers from the lunar north pole — a location that was chosen
because of its constant sunlight and a relatively mild, fairly consistent
Fahrenheit temperature of 50 degrees below zero.
Port Tranquility only exists, at this time, in the creative minds of seventh-
and eight-grade science students at Our Lady Help of Christians School
in Abington. Their carefully-thought-out model and presentation took first
place in the regional Future City Competition at Villanova University
in January.
Then, in mid-February, the students captured third place at the national
Future City 2008 Competition in Washington, D.C.
That’s not bad for a group of students from a relatively small parochial
school in competition with teams from 1,100 other schools. In all, 31,000
students took part.
This is OLHC’s 12th year in the competition and it always ranks
high. The school won the national championship in 1999, according to the
team’s moderator, science teacher Jane Ring.
The competition is designed to stimulate young people’s interest
in science, especially engineering. Only 5 percent of American college
students major in science, said Ring. A majority of the engineering students
in our universities are from other countries, she noted.
“We have to increase emphasis on science,” Ring said. In her
view, the real problem with science stems from the way it is presented.
“What good is learning calculus if you don’t know what it
does?” she observed. “Science can be fun. It’s problem
solving — not memorizing.”
The 22 OLHC student s who signed up in September for the urban design
competition worked with SIMS software to create their city, factoring
in artificial atmosphere, a geodesic dome and other needs for an extraterrestrial
city. Then they built their model. The final presenters at the competitions
were eighth-graders Maura Nolan, Paul Gennaro and Kiersten Moore.
“It was really fun,” said Nolan, who will attend St. Basil
Academy next year. “There was a lot of problem solving, and this
gave us a lot of experience of engineering on a daily basis. The hardest
thing was building the model. It was challenging but fun.”
Gennaro, who will attend St. Joseph’s Preparatory School next year,
knew of the competition because his brother and sister both participated
in it when they were at OLHC. “I was excited to do it,” he
said. “It made me look at engineering in a different way. The most
challenging thing for me was making the presentation before a lot of people.”
For Moore, who is also headed to St. Basil Academy, the most impressive
aspect of the competition was the way everyone at her school worked together
— and stayed on task.
“It was like Santa’s workshop,” she said. “There
were no major disagreements, and I am absolutely satisfied with the project.”
All three students said they would seriously consider an engineering career.
“Before this, I wanted to be a magazine editor,” Moore said.
“Engineering solves problems — it puts resolution into action.”
Lou Baldwin is a member of St. Leo Parish and a freelance writer.