OCU Meinders School of Business Offers $396,000 for DECA Scholarships

By Ann Houston
Oklahoma Department of CareerTech

The Meinders School of Business at Oklahoma City University is showing its commitment to CareerTech Marketing Education and its student organization, DECA, by offering scholarships  totaling $396,000.

More than 900 junior and senior high school students from across Oklahoma attended the 63rd Annual Oklahoma DECA Career Development Conference Feb. 28-March 1 at the Marriott Southern Hills in Tulsa. 

The scholarships were awarded for all 33 competitive events to first, second and third place winners at Oklahoma’s Annual DECA Leadership Development Conference, according to Vince Orza, a former Marketing Education instructor at Del City High School. Orza is the newly appointed dean of the OCU Meinders School of Business and Professor of Marketing.

“The scholarships are stackable with other university scholarships up to the cost of tuition and excluding fees, room and board,” Orza said. “Students winning multiple competitions can combine awards but not to exceed the cost of tuition.”

The donation will go a long way at providing opportunities for students in Oklahoma CareerTech’s Marketing Education programs and 65 DECA chapters.

“We are overwhelmed at the generosity of this donation that will have such a great impact on the future direction of Marketing Education and DECA in Oklahoma,” said Robin Counce, state DECA advisor. “Marketing Education prepares our high school and college students for rewarding careers in marketing, management and entrepreneurship.

DECA enhances that education by providing marketing-related activities and leadership development based directly on classroom study. DECA's activities focus on competition, on the local, state and national level, in specific occupational skills,leadership development and management training.

“DECA is an excellent example of the business community working cooperatively to create a well-trained, educated work force from which business can draw future managers and marketing personnel,” CareerTech State Director Phil Berkenbile said. “It is a relationship of mutual benefit. Marketing Education exists because business demands that it exist.”

The objective of both Marketing Education and DECA is to teach marketing and management skills in such diversified career areas as food marketing, hotel management, restaurant marketing and management, department and specialty store retailing, industrial and international marketing, sports and entertainment marketing, public relations marketing, finance and credit, advertising, insurance, wholesaling and entrepreneurship. The curriculum is tailored to specific career goals of students but includes basic scholastic and communication skills, human relations and employability skills.

“Students are taught the fundamentals of marketing and management as well as the principles of economics and free enterprise through classroom instruction, on-the-job training and DECA activities,” Counce said.

DECA is competition . . . competition in specific marketing occupations. Each year, more than 60,000 members compete in local, state and international competitions in their chosen occupational fields. State winners – about 12,000 of them – earn the opportunity to compete at the national level.

The competitive events program is only one of the ways DECA provides its members with the opportunity to excel and to be recognized. These events emphasize academic and occupational excellence as the building blocks for successful careers in marketing, merchandising, management, and entrepreneurship.

DECA utilizes the competitive events program to demonstrate the direct relationship between marketing education and the needs of business and industry. Competitions are a vital part of DECA's dynamic student-centered programs of leadership development.

Participating students know themselves better, gain confidence and are better equipped for business and civic responsibility as a result of competition, Counce said.

“Competition is the foundation of success,” Counce said. “It sharpens skills and talents, generates the confidence to achieve and motivates excellence.”

View/Download List of scholarship winners here