Above photo, from left to right — Patrick Scullin, Sotheara Ly, Phuong Vu, Alexa Galindo, Tristin Morales, Melody Shumate (top), Kaitlin Thomas, and Sunny Siu

Riverside, CA – Riverside City College students won five gold medals, and six medals overall, at the annual SkillsUSA competition which was held last week (April 25-28) at the Ontario Convention Center.

SkillsUSA is the largest demonstration career annual competition in the nation. Over 300,000 high school and college-level students participate in regional, state and national competitions yearly. The philosophy of the national competition is to reward students for excellence, to involve industry in directly evaluating student performance, and to keep training relevant to employers’ needs.

Four of the students advance to the SkillsUSA national competition in Kentucky, June 24-28. This year is the 55th year for the National  Leadership and Skills Conference. More than 18,000 individuals — students, teachers and business partners — are expected to participate in the weeklong event. Students will compete in 103 trade, technical and leadership fields.

Students work against the clock and each other, proving their expertise in occupations such as electronics, computer-aided drafting, precision machining, medical assisting, and culinary arts. Contests are run with the help of industry, trade associations and labor organizations, and test competencies are set by industry. Leadership contestants will demonstrate skills including extemporaneous speaking and conducting meetings by parliamentary procedure.

RCC students moving on to the national competition are Kaitlin Thomas (Redlands High School) in Advertising Design; Melody Shumate (Citrus Valley Christian Academy) in Graphic Communications; Phuong Vu (Vietnam) in Graphics Imaging Sublimation; and Alexa Galindo (Temescal Canyon High School) in Photography. Each of these students won a gold medal at the state competition. Other medalists included Tristin Morales (Poly High School), a gold medalist, in Introductory Advertising Design, and Sotheara Ly (Patriot High School), a silver medalist, in Graphic Communications.

In addition, RCC’s Sunny Siu, assistant professor, Applied Digital Media and Printing, was nominated for the Postsecondary Advisor of the Year Award.

“I am proud of our CTE students who have volunteered their time and effort to compete in SkillsUSA on behalf of the College,” Patrick Scullin, associate professor, Applied Digital Media, said. “Thanks to their hard work and the support of instructors they did very well.”