Inaugural SmartStart Summit Engages Younger Students in Exploring Career Options through SkillsUSA Massachusetts

In just a few months, Jared Munguia will enroll at Rutgers University to study technology and informatics, supported with a full scholarship.

He credits experiences gained through SkillsUSA Massachusetts as a big part of his success. In particular, he walked into a required presentation for the scholarship, feeling so prepared from lessons learned from his concentration on technology categories. “I was ‘I’m ready for this,’ because SkillsUSA taught me the necessary skills to really be good at that,” said Munguia, a senior at Lynn Vocational Technical Institute (LVTI).

Now, Munguia is doing his part to help other students find their way to SkillsUSA quickly and easily, so they don’t miss a beat in taking advantage of those same game-changing opportunities.

That’s one reason Munguia joined dozens of seniors and other veteran students to participate in the SmartStart Summit, a new program rolled out by SkillsUSA Massachusetts to better reach and engage students as early as their eighth-grade year. The program featured a keynote address, while upper-class students served as mentors and hosted booths that promoted different elements that students can pursue in their SkillsUSA experience. 

SmartStart provides a dedicated program for eighth and ninth graders, who likely aren’t advanced enough in their skills training to secure a state competition slot outside of leadership categories.

“Our whole chapter came together to design the booth, to think about what it should look like and to showcase our commitment to community service and helping other people,” said Jason McCuish, advisor at LVTI, which brought 16 eighth- and ninth-grade students and five student facilitators to SmartStart. “That allowed the upperclassmen to work closely with the underclassmen in a meaningful way. That’s going to go a long way to retaining these younger students.”

Finding a community that supports your dreams

Ricky Jordan doesn’t mince his words: SkillsUSA saved his life. Now a volunteer with the organization, Jordan, who had just moved from crime-riddled Camden, N.J. to Massachusetts to attend Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High in 2007, was invited to the state competition when he was a freshman.

“This whole program changed my perspective, my lifestyle – everything that I wanted to do, everything that I wanted to do, everything that I thought was important,” said Jordan, who competed in extemporaneous speaking. He also earned his cosmetology license, using his haircutting skills to pay for expenses beyond a full-tuition scholarship at Johnson and Wales University to study international business. He’s currently studying at Cambridge College to get his master’s degree in school counseling.

“SmartStart opens up that same community and builds a feeling of inclusion for freshmen as 14- or 15-year-olds, who have no idea what to expect,” he said, noting that society is still closing in-person experience gaps caused by the pandemic. “Being in that room shows them they have a community that cares for them, where you can feel safe, significant and valued for who you are.”

Jordan delivered SmartStart’s keynote address, during which he advised students to remember the acronym HALT – standing for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired – and to not make difficult decisions when feeling any of these things. “I was a father graduating out of high school and becoming a freshman in college,” said Jordan, who also served as a state and national officer. “I had my daughter midway through that year, and that was rough and tough, but SkillsUSA had taught me to become adaptable, flexible and open-minded. 

His mission was to inspire students to find their spot in SkillsUSA, whether graduates master a skill and step straight into a career or continue to college. “I want them to take what other people are giving them – from the advisors to the panelists to the older students in the individual booths – and bring that back to their schools and their communities and be the change they want to see in the world,” he added.

Getting in on the ground floor of something bigger

Brian Belluso Gonzalez, an eighth grader at LVTI, initially got involved in SkillsUSA because of his older brother. He’s focusing on the community action category.

“At the start of my year, I felt like I didn’t really have a grasp of what SkillsUSA was,” Gonzalez said. “SmartStart did a great job of filling in those holes where I didn’t fully understand SkillsUSA. I took away a lot of new information about the fundamentals of SkillsUSA, like how it focuses on the three areas of technical, workplace and personal skills.”

Manguia and his classmates centered their booth on community service, which has been an important part of the chapter’s mission. The team’s table featured a mishmash of items to be donated to a local homeless shelter. The younger students were asked to match items and place into a bag, which would then be provided to individuals in need. The booth earned first place for creativity and second place overall.

Anthony Robles, another eighth grader, is still exploring various career paths. Like his classmates, he had gotten a general program introduction, but the summit gave him a bigger picture. “It helped me understand what skills you will gain,” he said, “and how far that goes beyond just our school.”