ATLANTA, GEORGIA – On Monday, June 19, students and faculty members representing seven of Texas State Technical College’s 10 campuses traveled to Atlanta, Georgia for this week’s 59th annual SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference.
More than 20 students from the East Williamson County, Brownwood, Harlingen, Marshall, North Texas, Sweetwater and Waco campuses will compete against the nation’s best in events such as Aviation Maintenance, Cabinet making, Electronics Technology and Medical Math. The students became eligible to represent Texas by placing high enough at the SkillsUSA Texas Postsecondary Leadership and Skills Conference held in April in Houston.
TSTC’s students and faculty members joined representatives of other two-year colleges in Texas for a statewide meeting on Monday night at the Courtland Grand Hotel in downtown Atlanta. The group received cowboy hats that they will wear for the opening and closing ceremonies, state pins to trade and SkillsUSA Texas shirts to wear.
One instructor has experience competing at the conference as a student.
Apolinar Ruiz, lead instructor in TSTC’s Precision Machining Technology program at the East Williamson County campus, took part in 2016 and 2017 in machining contests and placed fourth both times. Now Ruiz is guiding Precision Machining Technology student Angel Brondel in the CNC 3-Axis Milling Programmer competition.
“It feels very different than how it did,” Ruiz said. “I need to train my student to get the first place I didn’t get.”
Orientations and contests begin Tuesday, June 20, and end Thursday, June 22, at the Georgia World Congress Center and Omni Atlanta Hotel at CNN Center. All high school and postsecondary attendees, along with their faculty advisors, will attend the conference’s opening ceremony on Tuesday night at State Farm Arena.
The conference ends with the awards ceremony Friday, June 23, at State Farm Arena.
SkillsUSA is a nonprofit professional organization founded in 1965 teaching employability, leadership and technical skills that can help middle school, high school and college students pursue successful careers and be part of a skilled workforce. SkillsUSA has more than 100 leadership, technical and trade competitions, ranging from Action Skill to Welding Sculpture.
For more information on SkillsUSA, visit https://www.skillsusa. org.
