The 2018-2019 year has been the most successful year for the Northwood DECA Program and its students have accomplished many feats. In addition, the Northwood DECA program has been the leader in collegiate DECA for the last 24 years. All of the student’s success was made possible by the unwavering support of President Pretty, Executive Leadership, Faculty and Staff.
Allison Brown, graduated from Northwood University with her BBA in 2018 and MBA in 2019, campaigned for National DECA office and won the position of Executive Vice President. She is the first National Executive Officer from the State of Michigan in 24-years. During her term as Executive Vice President, Allison traveled extensively representing Collegiate DECA at numerous events, including a meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in Washington D.C., to advocate for the continued support of career and technical education. Allison’s performance as an Executive Officer has been nothing short of exemplary. Allison’s leadership is a testament to the effectiveness of Northwood’s mission to create future leaders that make a positive difference in the world.
Annelise Norton is a Northwood senior, graduating in May with a BBA in Marketing. In 2018 she campaigned and won the position of Michigan Collegiate DECA President. Throughout the 2018-19 year, Annelise has excelled in her role and in doing so has represented Northwood University exceedingly well.
Elections for State Collegiate Officer positions were held in February of 2019. Three motivated Northwood students campaigned for and won each of the three State Executive Board offices, De’Andre Kemp-Jordan (Junior) won the office of President, Matthew Vaillancourt (Sophomore) won the office of Vice President, Elaine Murray (Freshman) won the office of Secretary. Northwood students have taken it upon themselves to lead Michigan Collegiate DECA.
In April of 2019, our high achieving DECA students traveled to Orlando Florida and competed in the annual Collegiate DECA International Competition. The 2019 International Competition brought nearly 2,000 of the best business students in the United States, Canada, Asia, South America, and Europe to Florida to compete against one another in a variety of business competitions. Our 2019 DECA team had the best performance in the history of Northwood DECA at the International Competition with 77.77% of our competing students placing in the Top Ten in the World in Entrepreneurship, Financial Statement Analysis, Emerging Technologies, Retail Management, Sales Management and Business to Business Marketing.
In addition to the work students are doing on the collegiate level, Northwood DECA students have developed a series of professional development workshops that are designed to teach high school DECA students how to compete at a higher level. Over the past year, our students traveled to a number of high schools and worked with high school students to prepare them for competition. Also, our program hosted a high school DECA Mock Competition which brought 130 high school DECA students to our campus for a day of experiential learning. Finally, our DECA team traveled to Detroit to engage high school students and teach them how to compete at a higher level.
