April 17, 2023, Minneapolis — Career and technical education students from across Minnesota brought home medals from the 2023 SkillsUSA State Leadership & Skills Conference. Three students from Minnesota West Community & Technical College competed in the state welding division held at Anoka Technical College. Minnesota West had three welding students ranked: Drayton Klassen placed 3rd, Billy Trees earned 16th and Willie Holm received 18th place at the College level.
The welding division had first and second-year students competing from 10 other Minnesota Colleges. Students were challenged with a written portion along with a GMAW, FCAW, OFC, GTAW, and SMAW skills. The contest weldments and blueprints were developed by industry professionals and scored by certified welding inspectors.
The annual SkillsUSA conference was a showcase of career and technical education (CTE) students in our state where 268 outstanding students competed in 53 different trade, technical and leadership events.
During the state SkillsUSA competition, the CTE students worked against the clock and each other, proving their expertise in occupations such as electronics, computer-aided drafting, precision machining, medical assisting and culinary arts. All contests are run by SkillsUSA with the help of industry, trade associations and labor organizations, testing competencies set by industry. In addition, leadership contestants demonstrated their skills, which included extemporaneous speaking and conducting meetings using parliamentary procedure. Top student winners received gold, silver and bronze medallions. Many also received prizes such as tools of their trade and scholarships to further their careers and education. The annual championships event is for middle school, high school and college-level students who are members of SkillsUSA.
SkillsUSA Minnesota has a statewide membership of 575 students and professional members representing 37 high school and post-secondary institutions in 22 counties. Members have consistently demonstrated their expertise and professionalism while participating throughout the year in a variety of leadership and competitive conferences.
SkillsUSA’s mission is to SkillsUSA empowers its members to become world-class workers, leaders and responsible American citizens. SkillsUSA improves the quality of the nation’s future skilled workforce through the development of SkillsUSA Framework skills that include personal, workplace and technical skills grounded in academics. Our vision is to produce the most highly skilled workforce in the world, providing every member the opportunity for career success.
State first-place (gold medal) winners are eligible to compete at the national SkillsUSA Championships, which will be held in Atlanta, GA in June.
About SkillsUSA
SkillsUSA is a nonprofit partnership of education and industry founded in 1965 to strengthen our nation’s skilled workforce. Driven by employer demand, SkillsUSA helps students develop necessary personal and workplace skills along with technical skills grounded in academics. This SkillsUSA Framework empowers every student to succeed at work and in life, while helping to close the skills gap in which millions of positions go unfilled. Through SkillsUSA’s championships program and curricula, employers have long ensured schools are teaching relevant technical skills, and with SkillsUSA’s new credentialing process, they can now assess how ready potential employees are for the job. SkillsUSA has members nationwide in high schools, colleges and middle schools, covering over 130 trade, technical and skilled service occupations, and is recognized by the U.S. departments of Education and Labor as integral to career and technical education. We have served 14.2 million members since 1965. For more information: www.skillsusa.org.