By Sarah Chacko / Staff Writer

Through the eyes of three Calhoun Middle School students, the future of society is going down. At least, that is the vision of the students’ model underground community, which will be judged against dozens of other model cities today at the National Engineers Week Future City Competition.

DRC/Gary Payne

From left to right, Calhoun Middle School students Taryn Schuessler, Kayla Tunnell, Lauren Featherstone and Lee Chen discuss the layout of a model city Friday in preparation for competition at the National Engineers Week Future City Competition regional finals in Arlington.

At least, that is the vision of the students’ model underground community, which will be judged against dozens of other model cities today at the National Engineers Week Future City Competition.

The competition, which started 15 years ago, encourages middle school students to use math, science and engineering to create a city of the future. The cities are first made on a computer and then as a tabletop model.

Students present their models and defend their decisions before a panel of volunteer engineer judges at regional competitions. Today, the North Texas regional competition will bring about 45 schools to the University of Texas at Arlington.

The winning team will be sent to the national competition Feb. 19-21 in Washington, D.C. The national winners will receive a trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala.

Eighth-grader Lee Chen, one of the students competing with the Calhoun team, said the tri-level concept for their model city, Pangea, uses every space within the contest’s size restrictions.

An airport, power plant and forest take up the top level, industrial buildings make up the second tier, and residential housing and commercial businesses cover the third.

Calhoun eighth-grader Chris Burke and seventh-grader Jordan Rushing also helped create the city.

Each team is supposed to have a mentor, usually an engineer within the community, but computer and technology teacher Debbie Hundley said the school was not able to find an engineer this year.

Instead, they are using the help of four first-year students at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science — Ade Esho of Grand Prairie, Ravi Naik of San Antonio, Vijay Ram of Plano and Vinay Ramasesh of Fort Worth. TAMS is a residential program at the University of North Texas for high school students across the state who are interested in math and science.

The TAMS students helped the middle-schoolers construct the model city and write the accompanying essay, informing them about general relativity and quantum mechanics throughout the process.

The city model is required to have one moving part — which in Pangea is the air tube that transports people between the city’s levels — and use materials that cost less than $100 to obtain.

Students used the computer game SimCity to create their fantasy community, which at first was a problem for the team because the software was blocked by the school district.

“They have a hard time letting us play games at school,” Hundley said. “But the students are actually learning a lot.”

The Future City program is mainly focused on getting students interested in subjects like math and science, but is also intended to show that students’ education today can make an impact in the future.

Hundley said that even if some of the ideas, like nuclear fusion power, are far from reality, the fact that students are even considering those concepts is a step in the right direction.

“We never know what one of these kids will come up with someday,” she said.

SARAH CHACKO can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is schacko@dentonrc.com.