As the largest student organization at Conestoga, DECA, an international organization that prepares students for careers in entrepreneurship and business, holds approximately 440 club members — more than 200 of which are new members who joined this year.
To ensure academic preparation among its large membership, DECA’s leadership board introduced a required Career Development Program for first-year members. Nearly every week during Lunch and Learns and after school, the club hosts meetings to help members train for competitions. Experienced DECA members can judge new members in practice roleplay sessions and offer advice for improvement.
“We sent a survey to the DECA group at the end of last year, and we were asking them what aspects they liked and what they wanted to see more of,” said junior and DECA Vice President of Communication Olivia Ji. “A lot of the responses we got was like, ‘I think we need more resources to prepare us for the competition,’ because last year most of our meetings were just informational meetings: like, ‘here are the district logistics, here’s what you need to do.’ But we never really taught people how to prepare and we didn’t give them chances to really practice role plays other than Cornucopia.”
Prior to the program’s introduction, club members would primarily self-study for competitions. But with the addition of training meetings in the program, new members such as sophomore Amogh Puorhit have the opportunity to seek mentorship and guidance from experienced members.
“I think the program is really helpful as it helps participants, especially first years, to prepare better for their event and have more confidence,” Puorhit said. “I’ve done the practice roleplay during Lunch and Learn, and I’ve taken the practice tests that are there on the DECA website. The practice roleplay helped me gain a sense of how to prepare during the 10 minutes you’re given and how to present yourself.”
In addition, senior and DECA Director of Career Development Zayan Malik felt that competition in the region has increased recently. He attributes the rise in competition as motivation for creating the new training program’s creation.
“I think overall the reason that we made this career development program was to catch up to some of the other schools,” Malik said. “For example, Downingtown STEM is a very competitive school when it comes to DECA, and they have a whole class for DECA. So for us — meeting after school or during lunch and learn meetings — we have to make sure we can catch up to other schools who do have entire courses. There’s a competitive nature when it comes to DECA, so we want to make sure we’re adequately prepared for that.”
In addition to meetings, the program offers opportunities for members to record videos of themselves practicing roleplays and email them to the board for feedback. With a formal training process, DECA adviser Jeffrey Conner hopes that future waves of DECA members can learn from the expertise and experiences of the club’s current leadership.
“I’m very impressed with what they’ve (DECA leadership) done so far, more than what I would have thought was possible. When we were interviewing at the end of last school year, we were really looking for students that not only had good DECA experience, but were passionate about it,” Conner said. “They have so much DECA knowledge, more than probably I have. And so being able to pass that on to the next generation of DECA members is kind of what we were looking for, and they’ve exceeded those expectations.”
Jeffrey Heng can be reached at [email protected].
