Measures of Success

Since it's inception in 1991-92, the Future City Competition has become one of the nation's largest not-for-profit engineering education programs.

Many outstanding alumni have found success in engineering and technology fields. Surveys of current and past participants confirm that the program is accomplishing its mission and goals to promote an interest in math, science, technology, and engineering through hands-on real-world applications.

• More than 60 percent of students say that the program helped them improve critical skills;
• More students are interested in studying math, science, technology and engineering than any other subject;
• More than half say they are interested in choosing engineering as a career.

North Texas Successes

1999-2000 was the first year for the DFW Regional Competition. The program has grown significantly from that point - to become the North Texas Regional in 2003-04 and one of the largest regional competitions in the nation.

In 2016-17, the North Texas Regional program:

• NTX Region remains among the top in school/organization participation. Registered 46 organizations: 29 schools from 19 districts, 3 private schools, 8 charter schools, 2 homeschools, and 2 after-school organizations;
• Attracted teams from as far away as Austin and Arkansas;
• Involved over 600 students, more than half of whom were female or minority;
• Continued to successfully reach into underserved areas - more than 30% of schools participating had more than 50% of students on assisted lunch programs;
• Evaluated designs of 55 teams from 28 schools that completed the program and presented future cities to the judges;
• Reaped awards at the National Competition
  • Our NTX Regional winner went on to win the National FC Competition in Washington DC;
  • NTX was awarded "Region of the Year" by the national organization;
• Continued (3rd year) the Future City Junior program for 4-5th graders (an abbreviated version of the middle school project) registering 11 schools and scoring the projects of 12 teams from 5 schools;
• Continued to attract students to engineering - (from post-competition surveys) more than 50 percent of students are interested in studying math, science, engineering and technology and are considering engineering as a career;
• Was entirely run by volunteers: more than 100 professionals from over a dozen professional disciplines contributed better than 1000 hours to mentoring, judging and organizing the annual program;

From one of our first North Texas competitors in her application to engineering school:

My interest in engineering first developed when I participated in the National Engineers Week Future City Competition, where working to create a future city for the competition inspired me to explore the engineering field.