Minnesota Takes Home the Gold at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference

America's Highly Skilled Work Force Meets In Kansas City

Click here to download the press release and medal winners list (.pdf)

The Minnesota SkillsUSA delegation returned to Kansas City for the SkillsUSA Championships, June 23-27, 2014, as part of the SkillsUSA 50th annual National Leadership and Skills Conference (NLSC), a showcase of career and technical education students. During the week, more than 6,100 outstanding career and technical education students—all state contest winners competed hands-on in 99 different trade, technical and leadership fields.

 

The winners of the annual SkillsUSA Championships were announced Friday evening, June 27, 2014 at the Awards Ceremony of the National Leadership and Skills Conference. The Conference was held June 23 - June 27, 2014, at the Municipal Auditorium, Kemper Arena, H. Roe Bartle Hall, the downtown Marriott and the downtown Sheraton Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. Over 6,100 outstanding career and technical education students joined in the excitement of hands-on competition in 99 different trade, technical, and leadership fields. Chris Fischer, CEO of Fischer Productions and OCEARCH; delivered the keynote speech at the event and Cameron Ferguson, Caterpillar Inc. also spoke on Wednesday evening, June 25th. Caterpillar Inc. sponsored the Opening Ceremony and Friday night at the awards ceremony, Mr. Troy Dally, Sr. VP, Lowe's Companies, Inc. was the featured speaker. Lowe’s Companies, Inc. sponsored the Awards Ceremony.

 

SkillsUSA is the national organization for students in trade, industrial, technical and health occupations education. It sponsors the SkillsUSA Championships annually to recognize the achievements of career and technical education students and to encourage them to strive for excellence and pride in their chosen occupations. Working against the clock and each other, the participants proved their expertise in job skills for occupations such as electronics, technical drafting, precision machining, medical assisting and culinary arts. There were also competitions in leadership skills, such as extemporaneous speaking and conducting meetings by parliamentary procedures.

The Minnesota Delegation of over 230 students, advisors, voting delegates and national education team members were on hand for the weeklong event. Special congratulations to the entire Minnesota Delegation for such a great showing in medal count, bringing home 24 medallion winners in both college and high divisions in eighty-eight different leadership/skilled contest areas and fifty-six (56) students also received their Skill Point Certificate at NLSC. The Skills Point Certificate is a tool to recognize outstanding talent beyond those who earn the gold, silver or bonze medals at the SkillsUSA Championships. High scorers in the contests received Skill Point Certificates. The Skill Point Certificate was awarded in 86 occupational and leadership areas to students who achieved a high score defined by industry. The SkillsUSA Championships have been a premier event since 1967.

Students from the following colleges competed at the National conference: Alexandria Technical & Community College, Century College, Dakota County Technical College, Dunwoody College of Technology, Hennepin Technical College-Brooklyn Park and Eden Prairie Campuses, Hibbing Community College, Lake Superior College, Mesabi Range College, MnWest Community & Technical College-Canby, Ridgewater College-Hutchinson & Willmar Campuses, Riverland Community College- Austin, St. Cloud Technical & Community College, Saint Paul College, and South Central College-Faribault & North Mankato Campuses.

Students from the following high schools/technical centers competed at the national conference: Alexandria Technical & Community College, Anoka Technical College, Austin High School, Century High School, Dakota County Area Learning School, Duluth East High School, John F. Kennedy High School, Moorhead High School, Mounds View High School, Northeast Metro 916, Red Wing High School, Riverland Community College- Albert Lea, Saint Francis High School, Secondary Technical Education Program, SouthWest Metro Educational Cooperative, Stillwater Area High School, Tartan High School and Wayzata High School.

Special Congratulations also to Allison Harder, Century College, Stormi Balise, Saint Paul College and Courtney Merth & Kevin Emmons from Tartan High School on receiving the President’s Volunteer Service Award. Also in attendance during the conference from Minnesota were Paul Anderson, Human Resources Technical Recruiter, Ziegler CAT and Pete Szybatka, Technical Support, Cummins NPower.

SkillsUSA is a national partnership of students, teachers and industry, working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. SkillsUSA chapters help students who are preparing for careers in technical, skilled and service occupations excel. SkillsUSA has more than 300,000 students and instructors as members. SkillsUSA organizes this event, and it is considered the single greatest day of industry volunteerism in America every year at an estimated cost of more than $36 million. Each SkillsUSA Championships contestant is a state-level gold medalist.

Top student winners received gold, silver and bronze medallions. Many also received prizes such as tools of their trade and/or scholarships to further their careers and education. The SkillsUSA Championships is for high school and college-level students who are members of SkillsUSA.

The SkillsUSA Championships is unique because more than 1,700 technical experts from labor and industry design and judge the contests to a set of entry-level job skills that test both a student’s knowledge and hands-on abilities. Safety practices and procedures - an area of great concern to labor and management alike - are judged and graded and constitute a portion of a contestant’s score. Students who excel in competition know they have achieved the skills necessary to be successful when they enter the workforce. SkillsUSA affiliated instructional programs represent one hundred thirty different occupational areas.

The philosophy of the SkillsUSA Championships is to reward students for excellence, to involve industry in directly evaluating student performance and to keep training relevant to employer’s needs.

For additional information, please contact: Jennifer Polz, Executive Director, SkillsUSA Minnesota
P.O. Box 29286 • Minneapolis, MN 55429 • 763.560.1932 Office • 763.560.1936 Fax
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Website: www.mnskillsusa.org