TMS wins design competitions

WASILLA — For the second year in a row, an Alaska school has taken first place in the Pacific Northwest Region for the annual “School of the Future” design competition.

In 2010, the Fairbanks school that won the regional contest sponsored by the Council of Educational Facility Planners International, or CEFPI, went on to win the national competition, too.

And this year it is a Mat-Su team that won the Pacific Northwest Region and will compete at the national competition in Washington, D.C., April 10 to 15.

“There is no doubt, this team represents some of the future architects, engineers, interior designers and graphic artists to come from the Mat-Su some day,” said Anna Lee, an Architects Alaska architect. She has mentored the 12-member team of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at Teeland Middle School since October 2010.

“It’s so cool to share what I do with these guys,” she said. “It’s fun working with kids. They catch on so fast.”

McCool Carlson Green architect Jason Gamache is vice president of the Council of Educational Facility Planners International’s Alaska Chapter and coordinated its statewide design competition, which Teeland also won to advance to the regional competition.

“The judges told me it wasn’t even close,” he said of Teeland’s win in the regional contest. “Washington, Oregon — we’re beating that whole corner of the nation. The Northwest Pacific Region of the CEFPI is very proud to send a second team from Alaska to Washington, D.C.”

The competition includes designing and building a sustainable school of the future model, researching and writing an 800-word essay, drawings that include floor plans, elevations and 3D-renderings in Sketch Up, videos, a PowerPoint presentation, an oral presentation and a 3D animation of the digital model.

“They are going to blow everybody away,” Gamache said. “They are really amazing. In fact, they exceeded my expectations.”

Lee said students have spent 20 to 30 hours a week since last September working outside of school hours on the project.

Gamache, Lee and Teeland adviser Mary Cochran said students’ parents also were crucial in the students’ success. Cochran said parents drove their students to school to work on the project after school and on the weekends, sometimes as late as 11 p.m.

“Some parents even brought in food for us,” she said. And more than one parent commented on how strange it was to have their child beg to be dropped off at school on a Saturday, Cochran said.

The students’ design is based on early Alaska Native dwellings and is partially underground to help insulate it from the cold and the wind. The four-story school would reclaim a former gravel pit and includes three “peaks” — Environment, Community and Sustainability. Sixth-grader Alex Neubauer designed the logo for the team’s “Tri-Peaks Integrated Middle School.”

The lower level houses the school’s heating ventilation and air conditioning systems, a fish hatchery, hydroponic garden and other exploratory classrooms.

In the classrooms, students would use the vegetables and fish for science, biology and other classes. And the fresh fish and vegetables also would be used for school lunches, students said.

“This simple idea of salmon in your school can open up all these ideas for things students can learn,” said Zach Neubauer, a Colony High School freshman who graduated from Teeland and is mentoring the design team his younger sister is on.

The rules for the competition require the team to have four student presenters. Teeland presenters are Ariel Hasse, Sophie Miller, John Goudey and Nick Harrison.

Other team members are M.E. Meyerhoffer, Kali McCafferty, Isaac Mitchell, Jamie Schwantes, Ally Neubauer, Aubery Mitchell, Kea Bekkedahl and Anna Blyshchyk.

Students will give their 15-minute presentation at a joint meeting of the school board and the assembly March 29 at 6 p.m.

But students will need the community’s help if all 12 team members are to travel to D.C. to compete, Cochran said.

CEFPI will pay for the flights and lodging for four students and their teacher, she said. The group needs to raise about $12,000 to send the other eight-team members and chaperones for the group, Cochran said.

The team has raised part of the money it needs to travel to the national competition in Washington, D.C., thanks to donations from Architects Alaska principal David Moore and Collins Construction.

Cochran said students have already begun to quietly discuss which of them will stay behind if the entire team can’t afford to go.

Eight-grader Hasse is one of four presenters. She said she wants to grow up to work for NASA some day.

“I actually want to be an aerospace engineer,” Hasse said.

Seventh-grader Bekkedahl also sees a future for herself that makes the most of her love of designing stuff like clothes, buildings and interiors.

“I want to do architecture or design,” she said.

Sixth-grader Ally Neubauer said she was tested for dyslexia when she was younger, but is good with math and three-dimensional spatial skills. “This just got me really interested in architecture and things.”

Cochran said this is the first year she’s been an adviser for the competition.

“I knew these students had the intelligence, dedication and parents who’d help,” she said of her decision to sponsor the team.

Gamache told the story of meeting with the team after they’d won the regional competition. He said students asked him for ideas about how they could improve their model. Though he said the model was already well beyond what their peers had produced.

When he mentioned that the model didn’t really show that solar energy was a big part of the design and that it was a little dark inside, the team took that as a challenge.

“One student said, ‘Oh, let’s get solar panels and put lights in our model,’” Gamache said. Though he said he wasn’t sure how to make that idea work, students were undaunted. “One of the model builders stood up and said ‘don’t worry about it, we’ll figure it out.’”

Lee tells the rest of the story.

One day when she mentioned she was headed to the store later, a student asked if she would pick up a solar powered calculator for him. He told Lee he wanted to tear it apart and attach the solar cell to an LED light to illuminate the model.

Lee said she found calculators for 99 cents each and brought back several for students to repurpose.

“The sky is the limit with these kids,” she said.

Before the group began working on the project, Cochran said the students didn’t really know each other.

“Now they are a team,” she said. “They did this as a team. And they all want to go and support each other as a team.”

Donations may be dropped off at Teeland Middle or mailed to Teeland Middle School, 2788 N. Seward Meridian Parkway, Wasilla, AK 99654.

Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.