Marketing students compete at MCC

BY SARAH BROWNING
MESA LEGEND
Submitted January 23, 2001

The Eastern regional DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) conference met at MCC Jan. 11, where hundreds of Arizona high school students dressed for success, ready to compete with their peers throughout the campus in simulated business and marketing scenarios.

"DECA is an association of marketing students at the high school level – it’s widely recognized among businesses because it prepares students for careers in distribution functions," said Bill Wilhelm, a DECA teacher at Marcos De Niza high school and one of the coordinators for DECA.

"We cover concepts dealing with product development, new product introduction, all the way through promotion, selling, distribution, market research – all of those different functions of marketing."

"We learn the basics of marketing in our class and then use that information that we’ve learned and relate it to a scenario at our competition," said Briana Rotter, DECA member and a student at Marcos De Niza.

Wilhelm believes that the hands-on role-playing involved in DECA events is much more valuable a learning experience as opposed to typical teaching methods.

"Kids in a lot of cases go to high school and get book-learned, and they take multiple choice tests, and they move on through this system," Wilhelm said.

"They don’t really learn much. They learn facts. What DECA really enables students to do is to take things that they learn in the classroom and use them in simulated, real-life situations."

There are different levels of competition, broken up into 33 categories.

Some of the specialized marketing-related events include selling, management, entrepreneurship, marketing-research, promotions, and advertising, among others.

Some events are individually-based and others require group participation.

DECA competitions involve business and marketing role-playing situations to stress performance-learning, while at the same time competing against other students in a simulated competitive business environment.

Edward Snider, a business instructor for MCC and a former high-school DECA teacher, sponsored this year’s MCC-hosted DECA championship..

"Ed deserves a pat on the back," Wilhelm said.has done a wonderful job."

According to Wilhelm, the forthcoming state conference to be held in Tucson will determine whether DECA students can qualify for nationals.