By By KATHIE HEMPEL / Niles Daily Star
NILES – Solving problems is a specialty of two Niles High juniors.
The girls are off to Florida in late April to compete in an International Marketing Competition sponsored by DECA, an association of marketing students.
Autumn Grayson and Sheena Reed won at the district and state level to qualify for the international meet in the travel and tourism category and the five-day trip to Orlando.
To say the girls are excited is an understatement.
"There had been a mistake in the judging at the first competition, so we only found out just before we had to be at the state competition last weekend," Reed said.
Despite having little preparation time, the teens came away from Dearborn with the state-wide win.
There are four levels of marketing classes offered in Niles; fundamentals, entrepreneurship, research and store operations.
Reed and Grayson are taking the second-level class this year and plan to continue. Reed, who hopes to be a journalist, knows what she learns now will help her understand the intricacies of the business world as she grows in her chosen career.
"This course has changed the way I look at the business world. It's not as hard as I thought. I think the technique and the application of common sense to the techniques learned are important," said Reed.
She hopes to enter the field of accounting or marketing as a career choice. Both she and Grayson agree that coming up with enough creative ideas for out-of-the-box problem solving is perhaps the most difficult part of the course and the competitions.
"We were asked to come with a solution regarding a travel agency whose sales had dropped. We needed to develop a motivation plan so we came up with this idea for an employee contest," said Reed.
"A salesperson who sold the most packages in a two to three month period would win a package themselves and then be featured in the agency's next advertising run. Our solution had to be cost effective for the agency as well as answering the motivation problem. Travel agencies get discount packages and by featuring their own employee in their advertising it would also save some production costs in making the ads," Grayson said.
Adam Jenkins, a Niles High first-year marketing student managed to earn a runner-up status at the same meet as the young women in the Food Marketing category. He is refreshingly honest when asked why he chose the marketing classes.
"I rather fell into it. I really thought it was just about helping to run the store instead of regular schoolwork. However, I found it really interesting to discover how technology fits into the business world."
His goal is to get to the international competition and to that end he will be continuing on to the second level of marketing classes.
Marketing instructor Celeste Anthony is extremely pleased with her students' accomplishments. She knows that any job these students secure in the future will be enhanced by the classes they have taken here.
"It is very important to me that they all have some sort of business education. Everywhere they go to work will be a business of one sort or another. Here they learn the skills of customer service, record-keeping, salesmanship, marketing, distribution, finance and internet technology. They also work with the credit union within the store here at school," she said.
Greater Niles Community Federal Credit Union has partnered with the marketing program so that the students can learn teller skills, financial responsibility, budgeting and gain a good understanding of credit.
"One of my student teachers told the story of how she quickly got into $8,000 of credit card debt early in her college career," Anthony said.
She is pleased that her students will have an upper hand when the card companies begin to offer the young people credit opportunities as soon as they darken a college or university door.
In addition to the marketing competitions, DECA also offers more than $250,000 in scholarships to students each year. Some of these are employer scholarships and others are academic scholarships.
A registered non-profit, DECA chapters also work with other non-profits in their local area. Niles High DECA students help to raise funds for Muscular Dystrophy and have worked with the Niles Service League as well.
DECA has been offered as part of the Niles High School experience for 25 years. According to the MIDCA.org web-site, Michigan was one of 17 charter states to affiliate with DECA in 1947. Today, there are associations representing membership in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Manitoba, Ontario, Mexico, and Germany. Of those 56 state associations, Michigan has grown to be the seventh largest in terms of membership.