The futuristic city of Aqua Serenity revolves around the precious resource of water. It is used for transportation, garbage disposal, energy, hydration, and entertainment. The city developed a new technology called Purex3 to harness storm water runoff.  This natural filtration system is strategically placed anywhere that water tends to pool and, after filtration, is distributed throughout the city for the needs of the citizens. 

So is this possible? Matt Cox, Joe Hill, and Nathaniel Poschel of Queen of Angels Catholic School think so.  These seventh-graders came up with the idea and won first place showing how it could be done at the Georgia Regional Future City competition held Saturday, Jan. 26th.

104 teams from 29 middle schools in the greater Georgia area competed for top honors at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta.

Queen of Angels Catholic School sent four teams to the competition and won ten specialty awards overall.  The “BLK” team won four awards including Best Virtual City, Best Futurist City, Most Innovative Power Generation, and Most Innovative Construction Techniques.  The “NUMA” team won three awards including Most Holistic Approach, Best Urban Planning, and Excellence in Use of Building Materials and the “Pneutopia” team won both the Architectural Excellence and Best Sustainable Design awards.   In addition to their first place honor, “Aqua Serenity” also won the People’s Choice Award.

The first place team was mentored by Ms. Tara Trostel , an engineering student from Georgia Tech, and Mrs. Peggy DeGance, a teacher at Queen of Angels Catholic School. They will travel to Washington, D.C. to represent Georgia in the national competition during National Engineers Week, Feb. 15-20.

This is the eleventh year Queen of Angels Catholic School has participated in the Future City program. The school has sent teams that have won the Regional Competition eight times. 

As part of the competition, students were required to create a computer simulation and a physical model to scale, write an essay and give an oral presentation to the panel of judges. The mission of the National Engineers Week Future City competition is to provide a fun and exciting educational engineering program for seventh- and eighth-grade students that combine a stimulating engineering challenge with “hands-on” application. The students must harness mathematics, science, technology, engineering and architecture in the process of designing their project.  Mrs. Peggy DeGance, teacher at Queen of Angels Catholic School explained “This program is a teacher’s dream for hands-on learning experience”

This was the first year the Aqua Serenity team participated in the program. “It was a fun experience to compete in the regional competition and we hope to represent Georgia and our school well in the National competition” said team member Nathaniel Poschel.  Team Mentor, Ms Tara Trostel commented, “It has been an amazing opportunity to witness the accomplishments of these young men. They combined creativity and imagination with an impressive work ethic to accomplish great things as a team. Matt, Joe and Nathaniel flourish when presented with new challenges and their innovative urban design reflects this.”