Bexley Ohio's Bexley Middle School Wins Grand Prize at 2009 National Engineers Week Future City Competition[TM].

Winners Earn Trip to Space Camp, Courtesy of Bentley Systems 

WASHINGTON -- A city of the future - Novo Mondum - engineered by students from Bexley Middle School in Bexley, Ohio, has won the grand prize at the 2009 National Engineers Week Future City Competition[TM]. The students - Abby Sharp, 14, Wyatt Peery, 13 and Tom Krajnak, 14 - teamed up with their teacher Peg Englehardt and volunteer mentor, Mark Sherman an engineer with Franklin County Engineers.

Teams from 38 middle schools nationwide, winners of regional competitions in January, participated in the Future City National Finals, February 17-18 at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

The grand prize winners receive a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, provided by National Finals host Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for the infrastructure that sustains our world. Bentley also is providing a 10-seat academic suite of engineering software for each school of the top three teams.

Second place went to St. Thomas More School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for their Future City, which they titled Esperyance. The team is comprised of students Maggie Talbot and Annie Talbot, both 13 and Tyler Bellue, 14, teacher Shirley Newman and mentor Ricky Lee of SEMS, Inc. St. Thomas More School receives a $5,000 scholarship for its technology program, sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE).

St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic School in South Miami, Florida, took third place honors for their Future City Vai Verde. The team is comprised of Lauren Rodriguez 14, Susana Becerra 14 and Nicole Fernandez-Valle, 12, teacher Susy Chu and mentor Maria Fernandez-Porrata of Marlin Engineering Inc. St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic School receives a $2,000 scholarship for that school's technology program, sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), USA.

Fourth place went to Gates Intermediate School in Scituate, Mass. and fifth place to McLean Middle School in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Wyatt Peery, one of the grand prize winning students, commented, "Our focus was to build a city that citizens would be happy to live in. We wanted to create a place with a true sense of community - like our own home town of Bexley, a suburb of Columbus."

"We learned that engineering is more than just making sure that buildings work the way they are supposed to," added teammate Tom Krajnak. "Engineers are involved in every aspect of building a city. We discovered how necessary they are and now we know the reasons why."

Since last fall, more than 30,000 students from 1,100 middle schools in 38 regions across the country have participated in the 17(th) Annual National Engineers Week Future City[TM] Competition. In January, each region held qualifying competitions to select the team to represent it in the Future City Competition National Finals.

Sponsored by the nation's professional engineering community, Future City, one of the nation's largest engineering education programs and among the most popular, aims to stir interest in science, technology, engineering and math among young people. Students must conduct research for an essay on a pressing social need. This year's theme, "Creating a Self-Sufficient System Within the Home That Conserves, Recycles and Reuses Existing Water Sources," centered on ways to improve water use by creating a home system that minimizes the use of municipal or externally supplied water for its daily requirements.

Students work in teams under the guidance of a teacher and a volunteer engineer mentor to design and build a city of tomorrow. They create cities on computers using the SimCity 4 Deluxe software and then build three-dimensional, tabletop models to scale. To ensure a level playing field, models must use recycled materials and can cost no more than $100 to build. Students also write brief abstracts describing their city and must present and defend their designs at the competition before a panel of engineer judges who test the depth of the teams' knowledge.

"Part of our responsibility as industry leaders lies in developing the talented and diverse workforce who will be designing the world's infrastructure in the future," says Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley. "Bentley's long standing sponsorship of National Engineers Week Future City Competition is part of our corporate mission of 'Sustaining Infrastructure', and in particular, sustaining the professions that design and build the world's infrastructure, which, now more than ever, is seen as essential to sustaining both our economy and our environment. The creativity, teamwork and commitment of these young minds is a valuable and renewable resource, and Bentley is proud to do its part to develop this resource by opening the eyes of these middle school students to the rewarding possibilities of a career in engineering."

For more information on the Future City Competition, visit www.futurecity.org.

About Future City Competition

The 17th Annual Future City Competition, for seventh and eighth grade students, is held from August, 2008 through February, 2009. The National Future City Competition is sponsored in part by the National Engineers Week Foundation, a consortium of professional and technical societies and major U.S. corporations. Major funding comes from Bentley Systems, Incorporated, Ford Motor Company and Shell.

About Engineers Week

The National Engineers Week Foundation, a formal coalition of more than 100 professional societies, major corporations and government agencies, is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers among young students and by promoting pre-college literacy in math and science. Engineers Week also raises public understanding and appreciation of engineers' contributions to society. Founded in 1951, it is among the oldest of America's professional outreach efforts. Co-chairs for 2009 are Intel Corporation and the National Society of Professional Engineers. For more information, visit www.eweek.org.

In addition to the winning teams, 27 Special Awards, sponsored by numerous engineering societies and organizations, were presented at a ceremony later in the afternoon.