TAHLEQUAH — Indian Capital Technology Center is experiencing another successful year.

Having achieved the Gold Star Standard as a district for a second straight year, ICTC Tahlequah Campus Director Robin Roberts said the local secondary and post-secondary technical school also sent its largest number of qualifiers for national competitions. Twelve students earned trips to national competitions held in Kansas City, Mo., and Orlando, Fla.

“We’ve had a good batch of people qualify nationally,” said Roberts. “We’ve never had that many qualify, from this campus, for nationals before. It was a great year. The instructors are really doing a thorough job, and it’s showing up in some of the their state-level contests.”

By earning a first-place finish in state competition, Adam Wheat (Post-secondary SkillsUSA Welding Sculpture), Chelsea Dorr (Secondary SkillsUSA USA Welding Sculpture), Shelli Rogers (SkillsUSA Welding Fabrication Team Event), Jake Robinson (SkillsUSA Welding Fabrication Team Event), Blake Blakely (SkillsUSA Welding Fabrication Team Event), Hayley Chase (SkillsUSA Job Demonstration Open Competition), and Blake Milam (SkillsUSA Secondary Telecommunications Cabling Competition) traveled to Kansas City for the SkillsUSA Championships at the National Leadership and Skills Conference.

Milam earned a third-place finish, while Wheat took seventh. Dorr finished 16th, and the team of Rogers, Robinson and Blakely earned a seventh-place finish.

Students who qualified for the national competitions held at the 35th Annual Health Occupations Students of America National Leadership Conference  held at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort are Rebecca Dorlac (Home Health Care), Maegan Blevins (Health Education), Alissa Hadley (Health Education), Amy Michel (CPR/First Aid) and Amanda Blackman (CPR/First Aid).   The team of Michel and Blackman finished as runners-up in the CPR/First Aid practical nursing competition while Dorlac earned a top-10 finish.

“It’s a great experience for them, whether they place at nationals or not,” said Roberts. “It gets them over a lot of fears. It broadens their horizons. They make a lot of good contacts while they’re at nationals. It’s surprising how many industry people are there. If [the students are] interested in branching out beyond this region, nationals gives them some good contacts.”

The ICTC director said students achieving success in the classroom and in competitive settings has helped promote ICTC and increase job placement.

“Overall, on our campus, we’ve had great job placement,” Roberts said. “A lot of times, when the students are performing at this level, job placement is not a factor. For them, they have a definite goal in mind, and they usually have a market in mind. They usually have something lined up. It doesn’t even require the teacher to get heavily involved because they’re that on the ball in other areas, as well. We achieved gold star status, which is a pretty high standard for career techs in the state of Oklahoma, and job placement is a factor that has to be extremely high in order to qualify for the gold star standard. It’s quite an honor to achieve that, and that’s something we’ve set as a goal and as a district we’ve achieved that for the last two years.”

 Aside from students competing in national events, summer activity on campus include various ongoing adult career education programs and some administrative details, the ICTC director said.

“All of our staff will be training with the comprehensive schools in the new teacher evaluation process. The TLE [Teacher/Leader Effectiveness model],” said Roberts.

“We adopted the Tulsa model, and we have a career tech version. Me and Dan Collins, the campus director from Stilwell, spent three days in the trainer course at Stillwater last week. We customized the Tulsa model to CTE, career tech education. So it now delves into things like lab safety, advisory committees things that are particular just for career tech that the comprehensive teachers don’t have. We had one of the main architects of the Tulsa model there. Gene Clinedinst. He was our facilitator and trainer and helped us to modify that model. So that’s something that we’re ramping up and doing as well just like the comprehensive schools.”

ICTC is also searching for a new heavy equipment teacher after former instructor Ed Roach announced his retirement after 17 years of heavy equipment operation instruction.