On March 7-8, Greenhill students participated in Texas State Career Development Conference. Greenhill had five people attend the conference and one student, senior Max Johnson, qualified for the International Career Development Conference in April.
The next competition, International Career Development Conference, will take place from April 16-29 in Orlando, Fla. This is the first time someone from Greenhill has qualified to the conference.
Distributive Education Clubs of America is an organization where students compete in different events under the categories of marketing, finance, hospitality and tourism and business management and administration.
Students can compete in different events, roleplays, case-studies or prepared projects. For roleplays and case studies, students are given 30 to 60 minutes of preparation time and 15 minutes for presentations and a 90-minute exam. For prepared projects, students prepare beforehand and have a 20 minute presentation and a 10- to 20-page paper, depending on the event.
Greenhill’s DECA program is very different from other schools as DECA is usually a part of a yearlong class. At Greenhill, it is a club and is driven by student interest and when they want to participate in it.
“Here it’s governed by someone’s self-interest and when it’s motivated by them,” said Director of Finance and DECA club advisor Matt Martinson.
The club was started four years ago by Thomas Rowley ‘24 with a focus within the stock market, but now it has opened up to different topics.
“Now, we competed in marketing and decision-making, sports entertainment and personal finance,” said Martinson.
Sophomores Nikita Bhasin and Alex Han competed in the Texas tournament for their project on sports and entertainment operation marketing research. They started their project in November, completed it in December and presented it in March at the conference.
Their project was developing a plan to integrate Artificial Intelligence into different businesses and organizations. They ended up creating an idea for the Wize Computing Academy. This academy is a program that teaches STEAM enrichment to kids ages 4 to 18.
“We did a lot of research and talked to cofounders to make a plan that was more successful,” said Bhasin.
