BRATTLEBORO — Students in the Windham Regional Career Center chapter of the Future Business Leaders of America recently netted awards at the 2015 Spring Leadership Conference in Burlington.
While at the conference, the 28 local Career Center students attended workshops and participated in performance events, competing against FBLA students from other career centers throughout Vermont.
This local chapter won the scrapbook award, the poster contest, and was honored for being the largest chapter in the state this year, with 100 members. They were also named the second Best Chapter in the state, as decided by FBLA's Annual Business Report.
This was Rebecca Freeman's second year attending the conference. A senior from Brattleboro, she said that she liked that “this wasn't a typical high school field trip. Everyone knew that they had a job to do and that we were expected to act professionally.”
Freeman said that she “didn't always think I was prepared enough for the events I entered, but then would realize that I actually knew a lot more than I thought I did. I had great preparation for this through my business courses at the Career Center as well as from my involvement in FBLA.”
She will be attending Lyndon State College in the fall as a human services major.
Ty Grannum attended the conference for the first time. A junior from Brattleboro, he said that he was “extremely nervous and intimidated at first, but when I got into my events, I felt like I was prepared, thanks to my business classes. That really helped to build up my confidence.”
Individually, students took 39 places in 25 events. The events they placed in were Accounting, Agribusiness, Business Ethics, Business Law, Business Plan, Business Procedures, Client Service, Entrepreneurship, FBLA Principles and Procedures, Global Business, Healthcare Administration, Help Desk, Hospitality Management, Impromptu Speaking, Insurance and Risk Management, Intro to Business, Introduction to Business Communication, Introduction to Information Technology, Job Interview I and Job Interview II, Management Decision Making, Public Speaking I and II, Securities and Investments, and Sports and Entertainment Management.
FBLA is the largest and oldest business student organization in the world. It has a quarter million members comprised of high school and middle school students, college and university students, faculty, educators, administrators, and business professionals.