SkillsUSA prepares workforce of America

Cassie Huntley, the state director for SkillsUSA Montana, said that they brought close to 400 people to Havre for the three-day event to take part in 29 different competitions in trades including carpentry, welding, automotive, cabinet making and many more.

"It prepares them for the world of work," Huntley said. "This is the future of the workforce in America."

The current skilled workforce - the plumbers, electricians, welders and so on - is soon retiring, Huntley said. By 2018, many of them will be gone.

"We're looking at a workforce shortage in the millions because all these people are retiring," Huntley said. "These are the skilled workers that will replace those people. These will be the future of America in the skilled work force."

There were two areas in which the high school and college students could compete: skills and leadership. The skills area included all the physical and technical competitions and the leadership included things like job interview skills, creating promotional bulletin boards, prepared speaking and so forth.

Each student could choose only one skill to compete in but had the option of competing in as many leadership competitions as they wanted.

SkillsUSA is 50 years old. It started out in 26 states, of which Montana was one. For 43 of those years, the Montana state competition has been held at Montana State University-Northern.

This year, students from about 28 high schools took part in the event.

"SkillsUSA Montana would just like to thank MSU-Northern for their facilities, their campus and how welcoming they are to our students," Huntley said. "They provide activities for our students to do and they've been so supportive about this."

For three days, hundreds of high school students roamed the Montana State University-Northern campus taking part in a myriad of activities. Folf, billiards, karaoke, archery and more kept students entertained as they waited for their competitions to come up.

"We come in to their campus and kind of take over their school," Huntley said. "We're just all over the place, and they welcome us."

She added that most of the competition chairpersons were Northern staff and faculty and about two-thirds of the advisers for SkillsUSA are Northern alum.

SkillsUSA is a chapter system organization in which high schools can form their own clubs at their hometown. They compete in the local competition, then the area competition, then state and then the national competition, which will be held this year in Louisville, Kentucky.

The SkillsUSA closing ceremony was held Wednesday at the Armory gymnasium.

"SkillsUSA is definitely a huge part in my life and a huge part of this country," said Greg Kegel, the interim chancellor of MSU-Northern, to the crowd of hundreds of students gathered in the gymnasium.

Summer Diegel, the regional vice president for SkillsUSA from Capital High School in Helena also spoke to the students gathered in the gym and gave them some life advice for success: five things to not do in order to be successful.

Those five things were believing in overnight success, believing that someone else has the answers for you, deciding to settle down when growth is guaranteed, believing that the fault is someone else's and believing that the only thing that matters is your dreams.

This year, around $250,000 in scholarships were given to the students involved with the competitions.