Students from across Missouri have taken part in the state SkillsUSA Leadership and Skills Conference that ends today at State Technical College in Linn - among the students, local contestants in Robotics: Urban Search and Rescue.
"It's just a thrill. It's quite fun to get new information and get a lot of cool learning experience from doing all this," Jefferson City High School senior and Nichols Career Center student Kesten Marsh said Friday as he and fellow JCHS senior and Nichols student John Hesser worked on their robot for the competition course of a cardboard house with mailboxes and a wooden ramp.
SkillsUSA is a national nonprofit organization serving trade, industrial, technical and health occupations students and teachers in public high schools, career and technical centers, and two-year colleges. Students who win contests at the state level will go on to compete at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in June in Louisville, Kentucky.
Competition categories included audio and radio production, automotive service technology, barbering, commercial baking, crime scene investigation, firefighting, masonry, plumbing and web design, among many others.
There were three teams of two Nichols students each competing in urban search and rescue robotics, while in the adjacent room Nichols juniors Krishtain Strobel, of New Bloomfield High School, and Drew Temmen, of Fatima High School, were among students competing in Mobile Robotics Technology.
Marsh said Hesser and he had been working on their robot since the start of the school year. Their robot and the others in the competition for urban search and rescue were tasked with finding two objects representing bombs, picking them up with a claw and disposing of them in a bucket.
Nichols vocational resource educator Stacy Buschman said there were 51 Nichols students at state competition this year.
Students from Eldon Career Center and State Tech also competed. Contest results are to be announced today during an awards ceremony.
Shelly Wehmeyer - director of health sciences education for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and a state SkillsUSA conference staff member - said there's more to the events than just the competitions.
"It's a leadership event," she said.
Wehmeyer said it's important that students walk away from the events with workplace skills.
Events since Thursday have included leadership labs and a business and industry panel for Missouri student delegates of SkillsUSA.
This is the 16th consecutive year State Tech has hosted the annual Missouri SkillsUSA Leadership and Skills Conference, according to a news release from the college.
Brandon McElwain, director of marketing at State Tech, said the college is honored to host the conference - another way to contribute to workforce development - and a lot of participants go on to attend State Tech.