ANDREA FALKENHAGEN Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Sunday, February 22, 2004 12:00 am
Anne Swedberg had some tough decisions to make Saturday morning. As the marketing manager of a new baseball park, she had to choose promotional merchandise - like shirts and mini-baseball bats - and give solid reasons for her choices.
Swedberg isn't really a marketing manager. She's a senior at Kelly Walsh High School and a part-time employee at Bush-Wells Sporting Goods.
She, like nearly 250 other Wyoming students, was taking part in the annual state Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) conference in Casper.
DECA is a marketing club for students interested in different aspect of business education - marketing for French bakeries, fashion merchandising for Saks Fifth Avenue, public relations campaigns for the chamber of commerce - it's all fair game for student projects and competitions.
One competition in which Swedberg participated was a role-play competition, where local business people serve as judges and put students on the spot as they pose a business question and give the students 10 minutes to come up with a solution.
Students also take part in written examinations and research projects.
Patrick Davenport, a senior at Natrona County High School, took part in a written event for fashion merchandising. He was assigned to create a promotional campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue.
He came up with the slogan, "In Mod we Trust," and supplemented it with photos of people wearing "mod" style clothing - the bold and bright look popular in the 1960s.
He also planned a charity fashion show and online promotions.
For Davenport, these DECA events give him real-life experience for a career in fashion merchandising. He will attend the Fashion Institute in New York City next fall.
But even students who are not planning a career in business can learn a lot from being in DECA, according to Denise Yates, a business teacher at NCHS.
"It's really all business," she said.
And Mary Hopper, a business teacher at Kelly Walsh, said she has noticed many DECA students who come back around to business in their college years.
"They say they're going to be an eye doctor or something, but when I see them again, they say they've changed to a business major, or a lot of them want to start their own businesses," Hopper said, "If you're good at marketing, you can do anything."
Of course there are other reasons to join DECA. The frequent trips to conferences around the country is just one, like the national competition in Nashville, Tenn., that over 100 Wyoming finalists will attend.
"The girl-to-guy ratio is about three to one," said Jack Gardner, a junior at Kelly Walsh.
His reason for being at the conference might be suspect, but he worked plenty hard to get there.
As part of a marketing project, he hand-delivered 300 surveys to Casper Chamber of Commerce members to do market research about their satisfaction with the chamber's work. The results, complete with graphs and charts he made, will be published in the next chamber newsletter.
"The kids really want to have some real-life experiences like these," Hopper said. "(DECA) looks really good on a college resume, and it teaches kids how to speak in public and present project ideas."