Ten Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College students won 16 awards at national competitions this summer. Five of those wins were at SkillsUSA competitions held June 24-28 in Kansas City, while 11 wins were at national Phi Beta Lambda (PBL) competitions June 22-25 in Anaheim, California.
Sadie Hebert, PBL co-adviser and Web Design Technology instructor at the Perkinston Campus, had students who won at both national competitions. “This is the second year in a row that we’ve placed first in Web Site Design at the Phi Beta Lambda National Leadership Conference and the third time we’ve won gold in Web Design at SkillsUSA,” she says. “Placing first in the nation at both conferences is absolutely unheard of and is quite an accomplishment since we are competing against universities. I am extremely proud of all of our MGCCC students and grateful for the opportunity to participate in these national leadership conferences. It is very tough to make it to finals; it takes a lot of effort on the students’ part, as well as the advisers and instructors who help prepare them to compete.”
Winners at SkillsUSA were Tyler Johnson and Katie Mosteller, Web Design Team, first place; Benjamin Butler, Computer Maintenance Technology, third place; Jessica Smith, Technical Computer Applications, second place; and Clifton Freeman, Internetworking, eighth place.
The SkillsUSA championships is the showcase for the best career and technical students in the nation. Contests begin locally and continue through the state and national levels. The multi-million dollar national competition occupies a space equivalent to 16 football fields. Annually, there are more than 5,700 contestants in 94 separate events. Nearly 1,500 judges and contest organizers from labor and management work together to reward students for excellence, to involve industry in directly evaluating student performance and to keep training relevant to employers’ needs.
At the PBL competitions, winners were Chelsey Clark and Elizabeth Kluender, Web Site Design, first place; Ryan Berg, Tyler Johnson and Katie Mosteller, Web Site Design, third place; Elizabeth Kluender and Alyssa Miller, Desktop Publishing, fourth place; Chelsey Clark and Veronica Graff, Community Service Project, seventh place; Ryan Berg and Katie Mosteller, Digital Video Production, seventh place.
Each of the student winners received Awards of Excellence as part of PBL’s comprehensive competitive events program. The winners of these highly competitive and prestigious awards were selected from among the national membership of 250,000 students and advisers and represent some of the best and brightest of today’s youth.