Southern Sweeps Medals at SkillsUSA
News
Students from Southern Adventist University swept the podium in the SkillsUSA collegiate division state championship in Web Design and Development in April. According to Richard Halterman, PhD, dean and professor in the School of Computing, three teams from Southern competed and placed first, second, and third in the Tennessee state championship. They swept the podium this year and last, and placed first and second the year previous.
Beginning in September, the students met weekly and put in many hours of practice to improve before the competition. The practices included receiving various prompts and building a web design for desktop and mobile devices with a specific time limit.
Junior computer science majors Sam Tooley and Caeden Scott were the first-place winners and qualified for the national championship, which will be held this summer in Atlanta, Georgia. Scott and Tooley are excited to participate in the national competition this summer. (July 3, 2024 Update: Scott and Tooley placed second at the national championship last week, with our team medaling there for the third year in a row.)
“We’re going to keep training and practicing and try to improve on what we did at state so we can make an even better design,” Tooley says. He adds that learning how to work and design faster gives them the ability to create and include more features on the sites they design.
Tooley also shares that the skills he’s honing for the competition translate directly as career preparation. “Everybody wants responsive layouts, and I’ve even come across some big websites that are lacking some of the features for mobile design. So, these are great skills to have for anyone who wants to work as a website developer.
Second place in the competition went to Noah Norwood, sophomore computer science major, and Mark Moskalenko, sophomore information technology major. In third place were Logan Gardner, sophomore computer science major, and Shinny No, junior computer science major. Computing master’s candidate Dakota Cookenmaster trained and coached the three teams from Southern.
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