• Funding a Good Cause Tastefully
• Getting the Word Out
• Two Take Top Honors
• Program Targets Thirst

Food services students in Bay City, Mich., collected over $30,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation — and a gold medal in the SkillsUSA Championships Community Service contest.

Ashley Robinson, Jessica Page and Michell Oliver, who have friends with the disease, managed several fund-raisers. In one event, the Celebrity Chef Challenge, the students contacted restaurants and culinary programs, inviting chefs to set up free booths at a rented conference hall. Each chef prepared items for 700, the number of tickets to sell.

The students also sold sponsorships and held a silent auction, according to Andy Bacigalupo, their advisor at Bay Arenac Intermediate School District (ISD) Career Center.

To pick the winning chefs in seven categories, local radio and TV personalities sat in a secluded room and sent waiters to fetch food items.

“It just so happened, our restaurant [at Bay Arenac ISD] ended up six of the seven categories! We will limit the number of awards that one can win in the future,” Bacigalupo says.

To help get the word out about SkillsUSA, the Trade and Industry Advisory Committee at Camden County High School in Kingsland, Ga., bought the back cover ad for their county school system’s calendar.

The ad was designed to boost pride among SkillsUSA students and to make the group better known to students who might want to join.

Two SkillsUSA advisors recently took top teaching honors at the Association of Career and Technical Education (ACTE) conference in Orlando, Fla.

Janet DeGennaro, a culinary arts instructor at Wilson County Vocational Center in Lebanon, Tenn., was named the ACTE Trade and Industrial Division’s Outstanding New Teacher of the Year.

And, Robert Gibbens, department chair for the automotive service technology program at North Central Kansas Technical College in Beloit, has received ACTE’s Trade and Industrial Division’s Outstanding Teacher Award.

Next time you put your money in and your canned drink doesn’t come out, remember that vending machines need maintenance, too.

Eight students are enrolled in the new vending machine maintenance program at Randolph Community High School in Glen Allen, Va. Instructor Dana Smith says that due to attrition, there’s a shortage of these maintenance employees. The students who enroll learn skills that’ll not only ensure that thirsty customers get their sodas — they may be able to branch out into additional fields including plumbing, electrical and general maintenance.