WHS students show out at TSA Conference

WALLACE — Students from Wallace Jr./Sr. High School participated in the Technology Student Association Spring Leadership Conference in Twin Falls early this month.

WHS was named Best Chapter at the event, which featured several chapters from the greater Boise area, but very few from schools outside that.

“The Wallace High School Chapter currently has 60 members (high school age only),” WHS teacher and TSA chapter supervisor Traci Goldade said. “We are one of the largest chapters in the state. There are only three chapters in the North or even Central Idaho, most chapters come from the Boise area. Every year we travel south, this year it was Twin Falls, to compete and participate in the Spring Leadership Conference. It is a three-day event filled with competitions, leadership breakout sessions and business meetings.”

There are more than 60 competitions that the students can choose to compete in, ranging from robotics, drone technology, web design, fashion design, video production, music production, speech and essay writing.

The event has quite a bit of pomp and circumstance that comes with it, but the Miner students are well represented and carried themselves well.

Representing the TSA leadership this year were WHS seniors Hunter Gust (TSA president) and Zayne Hunter (TSA sergeant-at-arms). “We begin the conference with opening ceremonies and speeches from the officer candidates running for office among other things,” Goldade said. “Before closing ceremonies the students have a business meeting ran by the student officers where they vote on amendments to the TSA policies statewide. They discussed the TSA budget and other state TSA business. The students are taught to run a parliamentary meeting and do so with professionalism.”

They also vote-in the new state leadership, which once again, featured two WHS students.

Following the vote, it was decided that Erik Brackebusch will take on the responsibilities of treasurer and Carter Bailey will assume Hunter’s job as sergeant-at-arms.

Of the 60 members of Wallace’s TSA chapter, 48 made the trip to the event with each student participating in at least two competitive events.

WHS represented several categories such as: essays on tech, CAD engineering, prepared presentation, fashion design, Chapter Team, extemporaneous speech, dragster CO2 design, music production, children stories (electronically enhanced), technology bowl, on demand video, stem career research, flight endurance, tech problem solving, promotional graphics, tech info poster design, digital video production and debate. Not to mention, they brought home some hardware! WHS brought home seven gold medals, six silver medals, six bronze medals and five pins of excellence.

They also won the Top Gun award, which is given to the school who finishes with the most medals received.

“I was very proud of my students,” Goldade said. “Many of them were completely outside of their comfort zones, yet pushed themselves to grow. It was very satisfying to watch the transformation over just a few short days.”

The Technology Student Association is a national, nonprofit organization of middle and high school students who are engaged in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Since TSA was chartered in 1978, almost 4,000,000 student members have participated through challenging competitions, leadership opportunities and community service.

The organization is supported by the Career and Technical Education division of the Idaho Department of Education.

It also has members from Germany & Turkey and is continually growing.