She's a Champion!
Bunker Hill Middle School’s Maeve Fitzgerald Takes Top Spot in Career Exploration Competition at FBLA’s National Conference
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP – Maeve Fitzgerald is a national champion. Actually, she’s more than that. The Bunker Hill Middle School eighth-grader outlasted middle school students from across the United States and abroad, earning first place at the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) National Leadership Conference (NLC) held in Baltimore earlier this month.
Fitzgerald took top honors in the Career Exploration division, outperforming students from the United States, U.S. Virgin Islands, Haiti, Jamaica and a contingent from China. Career Exploration includes several topics found in the Washington Township School District’s Computers and Financial Literacy curriculum. Questions in the competition came from the following competencies: Career Goals, Career Pathways, Job Searches, Job Applications, Cover Letters, Interviews, Basic Career Education Employability Skills, and Stress and Time Management.
Making the accomplishment even more impressive was that this was the first year of FBLA at Bunker Hill under adviser Lori McEntee.
Maeve’s first place National finish is the perfect end to our first year as an FBLA club,” McEntee said. “When we started our club, we never imagined that we would have 11 students compete at states, four compete at Nationals and a national champion. Maeve represents everything we love in our students – dedication, passion, leadership and a drive for excellence.”
Fitzgerald was joined at the NLC by Ethan Wilson (Business Math), Grace Kim and Emma Haley (together in Community Service). To qualify for the NLC, students had to earn first-place honors at the New Jersey state conference. BHMS FBLA had 19 members, each of whom tested at the regional level. Eleven students qualified for the state conference.
In addition to the competition, the BHMS students who attended the NLC also had the opportunity to attend a variety of workshops, which included college preparedness and standing out in the scholarship process. They also were able to compete in open competitions that did not have previous qualifying rounds.
“We could not be more proud of our school and students,” McEntee said. “The outcome was better than we could have imagined for our first year as a club.”
Future Business Leaders of America-Phi Beta Lambda Inc., the premier student business organization, is a nonprofit education association with a quarter million members and advisers in more than 6,500 active middle school, high school and college chapters worldwide. FBLA’s mission is to inspire and prepare students to become community-minded business leaders in a global society through relevant career preparation and leadership experiences.
- WTPS -