The school’s chapter of DECA, led by senior Co-Presidents Emma Yuan and Charles Freedman, encourages all students to attend meetings every Tuesday in the lecture hall.
There are currently eight leadership positions that are being fulfilled in DECA. It is expected that four of these positions will open up this spring due to the senior leaders leaving. “Our members work really hard to be considered and then they submit a full application and we look over it and choose the best candidate,” senior Yuan said.
Leaders want to design and sell club merchandise as a new addition to the club this year for fundraising purposes. “We’re going to try to do a lot of different things,” Yuan said.
There are new additions to the club for this year as well that will help grow the chapter here. “We have two non leadership members on state board of DECA to make decisions at a larger level of DECA,” Yuan said.
There is also a new faculty member who is supporting DECA throughout the year. “The Maryland State Advisor from last year, she’s not like the State Advisor anymore, but she came to our school from RM, so she’s a new teacher here…[and] she’s going to be helping with our Wootton chapter because now she’s allowed to,” Yuan said.
For this year, the club is trying to recruit more students to become involved in the business industry. “We had the club expo…and our Vice President of Marketing is also trying to post a lot more on Instagram,” junior Vice President of Chapter Development Maria Thomas said.
Yuan has plans to make DECA as strong as it can be for the school year. “I plan on competing, growing our chapter, and ultimately being better leaders prepared for success in the current world,” Yuan said.
Students usually join clubs to learn or gain knowledge on a certain topic. Junior member Sophia Missoi joined because she, “just wanted an extracurricular to do and find community in a business world.”
In DECA, students compete in competitions by solving business problems, and making proposals. Their first competition is, “normally around November to December but it also changes,” Thomas said.
DECA is a high maintenance and demanding club for students to join because they must put aside time out of school to study for competitions. A normal meeting includes preparing and going over possible questions that could appear during the competitions. They, “usually practice role plays like business role plays and just practice different business scenarios and go over multiple choice questions,” Missoi said.
The club holds beneficial opportunities for students interested in having a future career in the business world. “DECA is a fun outlet for connecting with business like minded people, young entrepreneurs, and having fun, and doing competitions,” Missoi said.
The main purpose of their meetings is to train for their future competitions. They’re goal is to make, “regionals, states, and hopefully international if we place in states,” Thomas said.
