Are you interested in business? If so, you should talk to Nicolas Warmke about Business Professionals of America. BPA is the premier CTSO (Career and Technical Student Organization) for students pursuing careers in business management, information technology, finance, office administration, health administration and other related career fields; they have over 45,000 members all over America. The average salary of someone who was in BPA is slightly higher than someone who didn’t go into it. This shows that BPA shows good on your resume and helps in job fields involving business.
Students go to competitions in different business fields such as speeches, technology, medical and much more. This is to prepare them for business. Most people say BPA is fun but Warmke said “you have to get good”. It’s very stressful and takes a lot of time, but worth it in the end.
“It’s a good way to get citizenship points,” two-year BPA member Ryan Holiday said. Holiday also said the main reason he first joined BPA was because former BPA advisor Sonja Coble begged him to join and he loves Warmke. The one challenge Holiday faced is how they almost couldn’t do BPA this year, but fortunately they could. The FH chapter had to file for special circumstances because of Coble retiring, and securing an official advisor.
Casey Hendrickson, another BPA member, said it’s really good for helping with future jobs and it looks good on resumes. Hendrickson is very passionate about BPA, unlike former member James Geer.
Geer was kicked out of BPA after only one week for being a distraction to others and goofing off. According to Hendrickson, the real reason was he has not taken some specific tech class and is not in medical terminology.
“That was bullcrap.”
Warmke was happy to fill in so the school could keep its BPA chapter active.
“I enjoy helping,” Warmke said.
It was less complicated to just take over rather than having to find a new person to take over. Warmke was also the former mock trial coach and he explained that BPA is similar to mock trial.
When asked if he plans to continue, Warmke said he hopes to keep BPA at Federal Hocking because all the current and most former students thrived in it. He also is looking forward to what the current seniors will do after this year. They started a tech program back in 2002 and needed a technical organization to go along with so they picked BPA but it was first registered in 2003. There was a mistake from the state about which region we were assigned to and so we didn’t actually start competing until 2005. After that they went on to nationals five times in the 19 years of having a BPA program.
“Fun fact! FedHock’s Citizenship Folio from the Graduation Portfolio is modeled/inspired by the BPA Torch point system,” Coble said.
So most current and former members have had good experiences with BPA. If you want to go into the business field or just want to look good on your resume, talk to Warmke and join BPA.
