HUTCHINSON, Kan. – Two pairs of Hutchinson High School students will be traveling to Atlanta, GA for the International Career Development Conference after placing at the State competition at the beginning of March.
Hutchinson High School students, Dalton Estes, Riley Lusk, Liliana Wilson and Karcin Regier, have qualified for the next round of competition for the 2022 DECA Career Development Conference. Two other HHS teams placed at the State competition, including Maddy Yantes and Abbie Davenport who placed fourth in the Community Giving Project category, and Kortland Brunton and Kelcie Shuff who placed fifth in the Community Awareness Project category.
DECA is an international leadership and entrepreneurship club that prepares students for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management. The Sweet Treat inside Hutchinson Career & Technical Education Academy is run by DECA students as a way to practice entrepreneurship, as well as raise funds for students to compete at competitions like the Career Development Conference.
“The knowledge they gained from working on their projects is tremendous. It’s been so cool to see community members want to partner with our DECA chapter and help our students with their projects through reading papers and judging,” Clayton Evans, DECA coordinator for Hutchinson High School said.
Teammates Dalton Estes and Riley Lusk received first place in the Sales Project category, and based their project on The Sweet Treat. Estes and Lusk had to create a twenty-page paper and fifteen-minute presentation on their business plan for the coffee shop.
“It was very exciting to find out we won. Our whole DECA chapter came up to the school to watch the live Zoom announcements. When they called our names it was a sigh of relief because now we get to go to Internationals!” said Estes.
Liliana Wilson and Karcin Regier also qualified for the International Conference, winning second place in the Financial Literacy Project. Wilson and Regier based their project on the Salthawk Credit Union, a student branch of Heartland Credit Union inside Hutchinson High School. Similar to the other teams, they created a paper and presentation showing how the Salthawk Credit Union has impacted their school by improving students' financial literacy knowledge.
“We couldn’t stress enough throughout our project how important this was to us, and how important it is to express financial literacy to help people budget and save. It was pretty nerve-wracking waiting for the results, but now that we’ve placed we’re excited to get to experience the International competition,” said Regier.
The International Career Development Conference will take place on April 23-26, 2022 in Atlanta, GA.