A team of students from Hempfield Home School Co-op has won the Central Pennsylvania Regional National Engineers Week Future City competition.

They will now travel to Washington, D.C. to compete in the 18th Annual Future City National Finals scheduled for February 13-17 at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill.

More than 33,000 students from 1,100 middle schools in 39 regions across the country are participating in the Future City regional competitions. The grand prize is a trip to Space Camp in 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.

The winning students, Joel Espenshade, Eric Bailey, Mason Miller, Hannah Brackbill, Rachel Schulz, teamed up with their teacher, Pamela Brackbill and their volunteer engineer mentor Dr. Edward Schulz, Retired Engineer from Dupont. The competition took place at The Whitaker Center for Science & Arts on January 23.

Hempfield Home School Co-Op and their City Sanphilina Vista stole the show Saturday as they won the 4th annual Central Pennsylvania Future City Competition at The Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts. They tackled the very timely and important topic of designing a city for those that have been affected by a natural disaster and doing it in a sustainable way. Part of their main building blocks for the city were Vegetated BioBlocks which were made from bamboo and are not only strong but rapidly renewable.

“We are just so happy to be going to Washington DC. We plan to make a class trip of it and learn as much as we can when visit in February. This is such a great opportunity for the kids and they really love participating in this competition every year,” said Ms. Pamela Brackbill, winning teacher from Hempfield Home School Co-op.

Central Pennsylvania Regional Coordinator William Sutton also added: “The students really impressed us this year. This was a tough topic but very relevant. We spoke to the students today about the importance of engineering and overcoming natural disasters.”

Central Pennsylvania Regional runner up include: Second Place: Ecolono from Governor Mifflin Middle School, Third Place: Landemia from Middletown Middle School.

Specialty Award Winners include: Wohlsen Award for Greenest City - De Groene Stad from Eagle View Middle School (Camp Hill), Phoenix Contact Award for Innovation goes to from Steelton-Highspire Junior, High School, Dawood Engineers People Choice Award goes to Graennborg, Iceland from, Mechanicsburg Middle School, Whitney, Bailey, Cox & Magnani Transportation Award goes to Vaja De Raja, (Oasis of Hope) from Warwick Middle School.

For those wishing to compete in next year’s competition, please contact William Sutton at 717-314-5778 or send email to: wsutton@wohlsen.com.