Penn Students qualify for Deca championship

DECA, an organization that prepares mostly high school-aged students for careers in business, finance, and other fields, holds an annual competition where team members of a team choose a category either role play or written and a event.

Arthur Haines and Mathew Zhang took on this challenge with their role play event of Travel and Tourism–Team Decision Making. They took first place at the state event and were named finalist at ICDC (the International Career Development Conference), the highest level of competition in DECA.

As the second Penn team to ever be named finalist, they have had a lot of problems to overcome and new concepts to learn. Due to the circumstances and struggles of this year because of the the Covid-19 virus, the events will take place virtually “either from somebody’s basement or at Martin’s,” Arthur mentioned.

Martin says they have worked really hard through multiple rounds in this competition to get to the place they are now.