Club Fair Showcases Breadth & Depth of Student Curiosity

 

One by one, the clubs get up in front of the community at All-School Meeting and give their elevator pitches. Established clubs such as Model United Nations, Debate, and Robotics talk about the depth of involvement and commitment they offer while clubs like Philosophy and Latin offer more flexible meeting times to their constituents.

 

The theme for every club, however, is energy.

 

“We have a vibrant and expansive cocurricular offering with clubs and activities that are student-generated,” Assistant Head of School Jim Long said.

 

“I was very impressed with the number of students that came up with brand new, serious, and viable clubs,” said Assistant Dean of Students Susanna Donahue, who oversees the scheduling of the club offerings. “This year in particular we had a lot of students offering a wide variety of clubs.”

 

One of the newest clubs to arrive on campus is DECA. Structured like Model UN and Debate, DECA will travel to conferences and offer students interested in the fields of marketing, finance, hospitality, management, and entrepreneurship the opportunity to learn more about those fields and prepare to pursue them in college and beyond.

 

Led by Blake Griffith ’17, Shahen Hagen ’17, and Rider Tuff ’17, DECA will provide an outlet for students to learn more about the business world in a competitive club atmosphere.

 

“I was introduced to DECA by my cousin, who is in the Wilmington High School chapter,” Blake said. “Similar to Model UN and Debate, DECA runs simulation style competitions at the national level. It’s been around for 40 years – my uncle was in it when he was in high school – so they sold me on it and made want to bring it to Rivers.”

 

“Originally we had planned to merge DECA into the Investment Club, but the more we dug into it and looked at the time commitment we decided it would be best to have two separate groups,” Rider said. “A lot of schools will teach DECA as a class so in order to keep up with that level of commitment we are going to use full club blocks to both educate people on what DECA is and prepare for the conferences and competitions.”

 

November is DECA Month and during that time, the organization will be providing a great deal of opportunities for their more than 3,500 high school chapters.

 

“This is a student-initiated club that is not only relevant in terms of future careers and education, but it offers competition,” Mr. Long said. “It gives them an authentic form of accountability in that they have to be prepared to work together to be successful.”