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Schools

DECA Students Excel at Nationals

The high school students are wrapping up a 4-day conference in Louisville, Ky.

Scotch Plains-Fanwood High DECA students are anxiously waiting to hear tonight whether their projects will win top prizes at the national level.

Thirty local students are currently finishing up at the 4-day national DECA conference in Louisville, Ky. Earlier today, Morgan Puleo, Johan Hernandez and Chris Freeman learned that their Financial Literacy Promotion Project had been named a finalist in the nationals. Kyle Birnbaum was also acknowledged for Quick Serve Restaurant Marketing. Final awards will be handed out tonight.

In addition, Lauren Harnett received a national role play award in retail marketing. Matt Greaney scored amongst the top ten in the country on a financial analysis test and received an award for the honor.

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The accomplishments are no surprise to advisor Marjorie FitzGibbon, who oversees the SP-F High chapter of DECA, an international association that specializes in marketing, business management and finance.

 "The students don't have to be academically gifted; it's mostly the drive to win that allows us to achieve state and national awards," she said. "They really want it. It's really a combination of academic fortitude and personality."

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DECA, which is consistently one of the most successful clubs at Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School, gives students the opportunity to gain leadership skills, while competing in an academic setting and earning community service hours. The SP-F group, consisting of 199 members in grades 9 through 12, is considered one of the strongest student chapters in New Jersey. It's currently the sixth largest in the state. That kind of power is what leverages local DECA students to continue to win at state and national competitions year after year.

SP-F High already shines at the state level with two state officers: Morgan Puleo is president and Melissa Goldberg is central region vice president. Kyle Birnbuam recently learned that he'll be carrying on the tradition next year as president.

"The dedication of the administration, teachers that have their students leave so often for DECA, the kids, Board of Ed and basically the entire town give us the ability to have students as state officers," FitzGibbon said. "I consider myself incredibly lucky to have this kind of support for DECA."

In addition to having students be selected for state positions, SP-F also continues to lead the state in national competitions. This includes first place in the 2008 NY Giants Creative Marketing Project Contest, in which DECA students Billy Johnston, Daniel Lubranski and Matthew Simon formulated a slogan and campaign ad for Claritin allergy products.

Each year, a state DECA competition is held to decide which students will travel to compete in the national contest. One hundred-fifty SP-F students competed at the state level in Cherry Hill in February and 30 were selected to go on to the nationals in Kentucky. Five other countries, including Guam and Canada, as well as every other U.S. state, were in attendance at the conference this past weekend.

"It's a really big competition," Fitzgibbon acknowledged. "For national competition, 200 people are competing with you in the same event."

Students take part in different contests at nationals, which demand various business-related tasks to be presented. Such contests require that students perform jobs from handing in papers to presenting a situation before a judge under a given amount of time. There's also a "role play" contest, in which students are tested on whatever division their competing in, like restaurant management, and given a scenario to present to a judge in under 30 minutes purely based on brain power.

One project that was slated to compete at nationals was a directory of local businesses that DECA students have been working on with the Scotch Plains Management Corporation. Seniors Mike Burke, Nick Jastrzebski, Lauren Harnett and Alex Davis received first place honors for the creative marketing project at the state competition. FitzGibbon said DECA hopes to complete the project within the next year. 

 "We go through a lot, but I love this," the advisor said. "I know this is why I became a teacher."

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