Anaconda is sending BPA student back to Nationals

Local chapter of Business Professionals of America competes at state level

Anaconda Junior/Senior High School’s Business Professionals of America competed in the Montana State Leadership Conference in Billings in March, which included BPA chapters from across the state.

The club’s advisor, AJSHS computer teacher John Flamand, took both junior high and high school members to the conference. He said this was the club’s fourth year attending.

BPA members compete at the regional, state, and national levels in more than 50 Workplace Skills Assessment Program events, engage in community and leadership service activities, and meet business students across the state and country through BPA programs.

The Montana chapter is one of 25 Charter State Associations of BPA. It has eight regions, a virtual chapter and over 1700 members. 

Charlotte Schroder, an eighth grader, is going to the BPA National Leadership Conference in Orlando in May. She and another junior high student qualified as a 2D animation team at state. Schroder also went to Nationals in Chicago last year. This is the third year students from AJSHS qualified for Nationals.

Anaconda BPA president Eva Murray said she was excited to be a voting delegate this year to elect State BPA officers for next year. 

She also noted that the majority of State BPA officers this year were female. None of the students from the Anaconda chapter ran to be officers, although Flamand said he encouraged them to.

Murray said the event was shorter than usual this year because the testing events were held at the high school this year instead of the state conference.

Murray and BPA member Kylie Clark competed at the state conference in extemporaneous speech, where a student takes two slips of paper with a speech topic from the judges’ table, chooses one and has ten minutes to create a speech arguing an opinion on that topic.

Anaconda BPA member Juliana Focken said that although she didn’t qualify at the regional event to go to state, she applied to be an intern so she could still attend the conference.

Focken said being an intern consisted of delivering meals to judges who couldn’t leave their rooms, take pictures for the event, and move computers from one place to another.

Flamand said the students also listened to presentations from speakers in different industries talk about what they’re looking for in the workforce.

“BPA is a great opportunity for students to get out there and experience the real world,” Murray said.

She said one goal she has for the Anaconda BPA chapter next year is to get more involved in the community.