Business & Entrepreneurship By William Cracraft
Business & Entrepreneurship/DECA Students Achieve Notable Successes and Get Help with Career Choices DECA. Welcome to our family,” added Joshi.
Photo by Kyle Cavallaro
Along with competitions, students attended workshops, competed in role play and written events, had fun at Great America and sang karaoke. They also attended a formal dance, and the mini and grand awards ceremonies.
Advocacy Video Competition
First off, Harker DECA president Savi Joshi, grade 12 and advisor Juston Glass were named student of the year and advisor of the year, respectively. The winners were chosen by nomination and no chapter has ever had both a student and advisor named in the same year. Joshi was chosen from more than 5,000 student members in California, and Glass was chosen out of more than 100 advisors in California.
State DECA Conference
Attending the state conference “was [not just] my final competition prior to the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) last April,” said Joshi, who took home a fourth-place award for her community service project. “It meant seeing my family in its element. That’s what DECA has become for me: a family. It’s the place and people I can go to when I need help, comfort or a challenge. “ICDC is definitely a bittersweet event, as it signifies the end of a life-changing four year journey. I am DECA. We are Harker
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In late February and early March, 98 students from Harker’s DECA chapter traveled to the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara to attend California’s State Career Development Conference. This four-day business conference and competition included workshops with renowned speakers, events with tough opponents and experiences for a lifetime.
“Our students did very well in competitions,” said junior Shannon Hong, Harker DECA director of communications and executive vice president of Silicon Valley DECA. The group took home three first-place awards, two third-place awards and 21 other top 10 awards.
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Harker’s DECA program hit on all cylinders this winter, achieving new milestones!
DECA’s “I am DECA” theme is the cornerstone of its 2014-15 marketing and membership campaign, and the video by Ankur Karwal, grade 11, and Alexis Gauba, grade 10, was named one of the top three in the DECA Advocacy Video Challenge. DECA challenged its members to produce a short video during Career and Technical Education Month that expressed their own stories and shared how career and technical education has impacted their high school experience so far. More than 30 videos were submitted from high school and collegiate DECA members.