Students topped rivals from four-year universities at California competition

Dr. Stephen Scott, president of Wake Technical Community College, is pleased to announce that 14 Wake Tech students took top honors in Phi Beta Lambda’s National Leadership Conference competition, held June 20-23 in Anaheim, California. Phi Beta Lambda is the national academic fraternity for business and leadership.

Four Wake Tech students were national winners in two events, bringing the total number of awards to 18. That’s more than a third of all those won by students from North Carolina. Wake Tech students finished above students from such highly regarded schools as the University of Wisconsin, the University of Pittsburgh, Oklahoma State, the University of California-Berkeley, and several others.

Wake Tech milestones include:

● James Scarcella was third in the nation in Networking Concepts. He and teammate Mike Schmitz also took third in the Network Design team competition.

● Jamie Centers placed fifth in Business Law - the highest ever placed by a community college student in this category in Phi Beta Lambda’s 50-year history. The other nine finalists in Business Law were all seniors at four-year institutions.

● Mike Grace, president of Wake Tech’s Economics Club, placed 10th in Economic Analysis and Decision Making, the first student from a two-year college ever to win this upper-level event.

● Hank Cox was fifth in the Future Business Teacher category, one of two most prestigious individual events.

● In the Parliamentary Procedure team competition, considered the most prestigious of all the team events, Wake Tech placed seventh in the nation, winning the Dorothy L. Travis Award.

Other national winners from Wake Tech include Ann Marie Frame, Noah Harris, John Harrison, Aaron Holloway, Franklin Jacobs, Jim Meyer, Siara Mims, Kristin Page, and Jeffrey Thompson. All of the winners qualified for the Anaheim competition by winning at the statewide Phi Beta Lambda competition, held in April of this year in Charlotte.

In addition to individual and team awards, Wake Tech won the Gold Seal Award, given to the top 10 percent of Phi Beta Lambda chapters in the nation for competitive wins, leadership development activities, fundraising, and community service projects. Wake Tech also won an award as the largest Phi Beta Lambda chapter in the 12-state Southern Region: the chapter has grown from 15 members two years ago to 114 today.