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	Philadelphia Saturday January 24, 2026 Archbishop Carroll High School 211 Matson Ford Road, Radnor, PA 19087

8:00 AM - 12 PM for most volunteer roles
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM for a few volunteer roles
1:00 PM to 5:00 PM for a few volunteer roles

Future City Competition Volunteer Information

About 200 volunteers from the Greater Philadelphia Area are needed to run the competition. Volunteer roles include working directly (virtually and/or in-person) with the student teams as a mentor; judging of essays prior to the competition; judging models, presentations, and Q&A; evaluating for special awards; general tasks before or during the competition; and serving on the Steering Committee to help plan the competition.

Note: You cannot do both Presentation/Q&A/Model Judge and Special Awards Evaluator as these activities are concurrent, last all morning and are in different locations in the building.

CLICK HERE TO VOLUNTEER

Mentor: Work with a student team to build their model and prepare for the competition. Mentoring can be done in person or virtually.

City Essay Judge: Evaluate a 1,500-word essay describing each team's city and response to the engineering challenge. The instructions for accessing and judging the essays will be emailed to you. Essays will be available for judging in mid-December and judging will be completed by mid-January. We anticipate 30-35 essays will be submitted; all judges will evaluate all essays, which could take about 20 minutes per essay. Rubrics and a training handout will be provided. The scores will need to be entered into the Competition Management System (CMS, aka competition portal)

Presentation/Q&A/Model Judge: This position is in the morning session (approx 8 am- noon). Presentation/Q&A/Model Judges will evaluate the seven minute presentation and then ask questions for eight minutes. They will also evaluate the models and presentation materials and review their competition expense forms during the morning of the competition. We anticipate that each judge will evaluate five to six teams. A scoring rubric will be provided and training before the competition will be provided via Zoom. The judges will need to enter their own scores into the competition portal (aka Competition Management System (CMS)) and will need to bring a computer and power cord.

Special Awards Evaluator: This position is in the morning session (approx 8 am- noon). Select which teams meet the criteria for a Special Award. Scores will be recorded online using a mobile device. Training and detailed instructions will be provided in the week leading up to the competition.

Photographer: Multiple positions for both morning and afternoon sessions. Volunteers must have their own camera and be able to upload pictures to Future City drive in JPG or PNG format. Some of th morning and afternoon assignments are very structured to ensure that we capture and identify every team in both morning and afternnon activities. The volunteers who take candid pictures are also responsible for selecting a limited number of “best pictures” for posting.

Competition Support: We will need people to help with numerous different tasks such as helping teams get to the judging room, helping to set up and clean up the competition site, running errands, and other tasks as needed.

Website Support: This is a long term volunteer role to assist in creating a new website using WordPress or a similar CMS/site builder application and update content moving forward. Prefer someone who has some experience using this type of tool or good technical skills and a willingness to learn new things. If you can format a Word or PowerPoint document, you can create and maintain a pretty good website with WordPress or similar tools.

Last Modified 09/16/2025