There are more than 50 clubs at St. Paul Academy and Summit School with many more new ones being made every year. The DECA club stands out with its out-of-school competitions and international recognition.
The Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) is a competition that is business and investment oriented. DECA is composed of four main categories with competitions being spread between them. The four clusters are: marketing, business, hospitality and entrepreneurship. Participants prepare in one category and partake in interviews and mock scenarios within the categories.
These categories aren’t limited to their name and each one includes a broad variety of cases. Competition forms vary between interviews, presentations and roleplay. While competing, participants can choose to engage with a partner or individually.
This wide range of activities are great for acquiring skills and planning needed in the future. “Career planning and great interview skills are a lot of what we practiced,” said sophomore Gisele Parnell.
Parnell recently transferred to SPA from her old school where she participated actively in DECA and as a result of her experience, she is one of the club leaders.
Though she has only been to a handful of competitions, Parnell emphasizes the benefits of attending: “It can be very real, like proposing your own idea for marketing,” she said.
Another layer of making DECA prepare students for the future is how they are scored. Each exhibit, one participates in, is graded based on some key focuses on confidence, high energy, and knowledge about the craft, which is how likely the judges are to hire some of their services. Practicing these skills early on is very beneficial if it is something that one wants to pursue in their future.
The three club leaders: sophomores Izzy Middlebrook, Giselle Parnell and Archie Dougherty, were the ones to utilize skills learned from DECA to proactively reach out to upper school history teacher Varsha Venkatasubramanian, who is the teacher leader of the club. Although she was initially unfamiliar with DECA, after hearing about its similarities with MUN and its ties with entrepreneurship, she was quickly on board. “I will be teaching Econ next semester as a senior elective, so they figured I might be interested,” Venkat said. Being familiar with both Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) and MUN, Venkat was eager to do her own research on how DECA worked and their flow.
Because the club is new to SPA, the club leaders and their advisor are still waiting for approval from administration to go forward with their club meetings. Even though they haven’t met in person yet, there are almost 60 eager students who have signed up for their email list.
If you are not part of a club at the moment, consider joining DECA for the opportunities it provides.
