BPA competition opens doors for area H.S. students
The Wayne County Schools Career Center Business Professionals of America team works on their project featuring Adaptive Sports Program of Ohio. The team presented at the annual Workplace Skills Assessment Program competitive event at Kent State Tuscarawas on Friday, Jan. 10.
Teamwork, commitment, work ethic and the ability to stand up under pressure were all on display recently at an educational event designed to encourage students to pursue their passions in developing a career.
The annual Business Professionals of America Ohio Region 8 competition took place in Founders Hall at Kent State Tuscarawas on Friday, Jan. 10, where high school students from Buckeye Career Center, Buckeye Career Center East Holmes campus, Canton South High School, Washington High School, Perry High School and Wayne County Schools Career Center were afforded an opportunity to share the projects they created.
The event featured around 275 students who participated in different events and another 50 judges, proctors and advisors that helped provide some constructive advice and judge the projects. In addition guest speaker Rocky Schanower, owner of Park Street Pizza in Sugarcreek, shared his success story with the intent of inspiring the students to work hard to achieve their dreams in hopes of leading them to the kind of success Schanower has found.
The Workplace Skills Assessment Program Competitive Events program is a primary intra-curricular component offered by Business Professionals of America. Students prepare for and compete in contests in over 90 categories, under five assessment areas including finance, business administration, management information systems, digital communication and design and management, and marketing and communication.
“These are all competitive events for career tech students in five different fields, and it is a challenging event that is designed to encourage them to be creative in whatever field they are in,” said Amy Stauffer-McNutt, educator at Buckeye Career Center East Holmes campus. “This is a wonderful opportunity to gain valuable knowledge and confidence in finance, business administration, computer networking, multimedia, graphic arts or whatever field interests them.”
The Workplace Skills Assessment Program is an integral part of Business Professionals of America. The goal of the program is to provide all business students with the opportunity to demonstrate workplace skills learned through business-education curricula.
The competition was divided into graded events where students would enter a room individually and take a test and judged events where individuals or teams could present a project in front of a panel of judges. Community professionals from throughout the area volunteered their time to serve as judges in each of the many categories. The judges were asked to fill out a rubric and rank each performance.
“Not only are these students gaining a lot of knowledge and experience in their fields, they are getting some invaluable feedback from professionals in the fields they are interested in, feedback that can go a long way in helping them get to where they want to be,” Stauffer-McNutt said.
The judges were happy to assist in the process of educating and encouraging these young adults as they pursue a career in a specific field.
Mike Simon, production manager, joined Nate Forshee of Massillon Cable MCTV to judge media-production efforts from the students. Simon said being there for the students is something the judges enjoy.
“We’re looking for a cohesive presentation in which everything is cited properly,” Simon said. “We are looking for creativity and whether their project connects with their target group.”
They also said they try to ask questions that compel the students to think about their projects in different ways they may not have thought of before.
“It’s about creating growth,” Simon said.
A quartet from Wayne County Schools Career Center focused their project on the efforts of Casey Followay and the Adaptive Sports Program of Ohio. Followay, a gifted chaired athlete who hails from Wooster, is a U.S. record-holder who recently competed in the Para-Pan American Games in Lima, Peru and also serves as a spokesperson for ASPO. The students, who included Kierston Crawford, Brandt Giauque, Carter Withrow and Jayden Nicholson, felt Followay’s story and the effort being put into ASPO was a story worth telling.
“I thought the presentation went really well,” Withrow said after the group had finished. “I thought we supported it. Brandt took a lot of nice pictures, and we did a good job presenting. It was a little nerve-wracking presenting, but once we got going, it wasn’t too bad.”
“This was the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, so I was a little nervous,” Crawford said. “After we got into it and I started talking some, it calmed me down, and I think we did well. The video we made came out really great and the feelings we wanted to portray, and it had the feel we wanted in encouraging people to urge people to donate to the ASPO.”
Nicholson came into the group at the last second, and he created the poster that accompanied the video and helped bring the project to life even further.
“I want people to be inspired by it,” Nicholson said.
Their efforts were rewarded with a first-place rating, advancing them to the state competition.
WCSCC educator Jen Rue told her students that professionals in today’s world are seeking to bring aboard well-educated, prepared and confident young people, so the time to prepare themselves is now.
“These are good opportunities to work on their skills and to learn how to work together as a team to make themselves better,” Rue said. “I like the idea that they wanted to explore a project like ASPO that is helping so many people and they wanted to help promote that effort. The nice thing about this is that the farther they go in this competition, the more they can share the goals of ASPO, and that was part of the reason we really wanted to get this project right.”
Kent State Tuscarawas has volunteered its campus for the event because it doesn’t hold classes on Fridays. However, the event does give students a chance to explore the campus and get a feel for what campus life is like.
“We are really grateful to have the opportunity to utilize the facilities here because they are really perfect for what we need,” Stauffer-McNutt said.
Students who had already given their presentations and tested sat around the facility and chatted and laughed, the nervous energy they had prior to their efforts having faded. Those yet to present or test simply had to wait their turn, hoping their effort would be good enough to advance to the state competition.