At Madison High School in NJ students have the opportunity to join DECA, Distributive Education Clubs of America. Students explore the varied fields of business and learn about the corporate world. They choose to study a specific event or group event in the fields of either finance, business management, marketing, hospitality and tourism, or entrepreneurship. In order to participate, students must take a prerequisite business course at Madison and pass an exam to qualify. They also had to attend a previous contest and be selected for the New Jersey State Career Development Conference on March 4-6th in Atlantic City.
In order to qualify, Madison High School sent 50 students to a district event at Ramapo College in January. Led by Mrs.Rankel, the advisor of Madison High School DECA, 8 students qualified for DECA states. These 8 students are Nicole Amaral (senior), Samuel Berk (junior), Kellen Cheu (junior), Fiona Li (senior), Eliana Mandel (sophomore), Karl Maurer (sophomore), Noah Schaar (sophomore), Tyler Toto (junior).
Nicole is competing in human resource management, Sam and Tyler are competing in entrepreneurship, Eliana and Karl are competing in business law and ethics team decision making, and Noah Schaar and Kellen Cheu competed in entrepreneurship innovation planning. This year, 4,600 students were invited to the conference which is the greatest size they had ever had.
DECA, with a 70 year history and founded in 1946, allows students, educators, school administrators, and business professionals to draw a connection. DECA provides a journey for people to engage in various experiences in preparation to be leaders and entrepreneurs. Although technology and activities have evolved over time, the mission remains the same. The goal is to make rising generations academically prepared, community oriented, professionally responsible, and experienced leaders.
Inclusive to both college and high school students, over 200,000 members of DECA come from high schools and over 15,000 from colleges. It includes students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, China, Germany, Guam, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Spain.
In regards to the performance of the Madison High School students, Nicole Amaral won an award for representing the chapter and the DECA campaign. Additionally, Fiona Li won two awards for her role plays in the conference. Both of the awards were in the restaurant and food service management series. Fiona is now qualified to go to the ICDC conference in April of 2024 in California, making it as the top 7 of 75 competitors.