Shoreline’s DECA 2015 team returned from the Collegiate DECA Pacific Northwest Career Development Conference held Feb. 19-21 in Victoria, BC with five first place wins, making this year’s team the most decorated in recent memory.
Of the 17 students representing Shoreline in 13 different events at this year’s conference, 15 students placed third or better. All 17 Shoreline participants qualified for the 2015 Collegiate DECA International Career Development Conference, April 17-22, in Orlando, Fla. The International Conference will involve 1,200 students from Canada, China and the United States.
DECA has been active at Shoreline Community College since 1966 and this is the best overall finish by our students since 1992. This year’s performance is made all the more impressive by the fact that this marked the first year competing for most of DECA 2015’s members — only one of the several first-place-winning team members is a second-year DECA competitor.
In addition, the team competing in the category of Emerging Technologies, made up of Nicolas Ho and (MJ) Munkhjargal Jambalsuren, both first-year DECA students, even managed to receive a perfect score of 100 points from each of their three judges. They earned this top score despite a setback that caused Ho to have to present his and Jambalsuren’s presentation alone.
DECA faculty advisor David Starr said, “It has been an honor to work with such an outstanding group of students who have successfully represented Shoreline’s commitment to excellence in their international competition.”
Shoreline’s State Finalists were:
Nicholas Ho, 1st Place, Emerging Technologies
Xanne Sarka and Yvonne Hill, 1st Place, Entrepreneurship
Jessica Irby, 1st Place, Hospitality Marketing
Kenneth Lo and Pei-Chen Wang, 1st Place, International Marketing
Dominic Dumas, 1st Place, Professional Selling
Omar Marouf and Liem Nguyen, 2nd Place, Sports & Entertainment Marketing
Spiridon Pappas and Simran Sandhu, 2nd Place, International Marketing
Shaina Hibbert, 2nd Hospitality Marketing
Teisha Billings, 2nd Place, Human Resource Management
Resmin Sengider, 2nd Place, Advertising Campaign
Rachel Degginer, 3rd Place, Retail Management
Also qualifying for the International Conference were:
Suzette Dutton, Entrepreneurship
Lisa Yang, Professional Selling
Shoreline students went head to head against students from other prominent schools throughout the region, including Western Washington University, Bellevue College, and Gonzaga.
DECA is an international association of students of marketing and management. The Shoreline advisors working with the students are Stephen McCloskey, Ailsa Yamamoto, Mona Starr and David Starr. McCloskey and Yamamoto will escort the team to the International Conference in April.