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The HOSA International Leadership Conference was held June 26th-29th in Houston, TX. HOSA stands for Health Occupations Students of America. The purpose of the HOSA organization is to empower students looking to become future health professionals to become leaders in the health community at the global level, through education, collaboration and experience. The organization gives students experience and exposure to different pathways to help them decide what they might like to pursue after graduation. Not only is it educational but allows them to compete in fun ways. This year Avon sent five high school students including Courtney Sees, McKenna Kocmich, Erica Cahoy, Landon Thury and Caleb Wallinga along with their HOSA advisor, Alexis Jurrens. In order to be able to attend the International Leadership Conference, HOSA students compete in the state-wide competition in April annually. Students can choose to compete in 1-2 events of the over 60 events offered in areas such as nursing, sports medicine, biomedical debate, vet science, dentistry, etc. If a student places in the top three at the state competition, they then qualify to go on to the international competition. The five students that attended the conference qualified in their events. There was also another group of four that qualified for the international competition, but they chose not to attend. The Avon High School HOSA Chapter had 16 students as a part of the group this past 2023- 2024 school year. According to Avon HOSA advisor, Alexis Jurrens, the group continues to grow each year and as the advisor she could not be happier to see this trend. When asked how Alexis decided to become the HOSA advisor, she said that when she had started teaching in Freeman in 2017, she was asked to help get a chapter started in their school. As she began to learn more about the opportunities and benefits of HOSA for students, she became more excited about being a HOSA advisor. She then helped Bon Homme start a HOSA chapter in 2020 when she began teaching at their school. When she moved to Avon to begin teaching, there was already a successful HOSA chapter in place, and it only made sense to her to continue to be a part of the organization as an advisor. The Avon HOSA chapter partners with St. Michael’s Hospital in Tyndall where Alexis’ co-advisor, Ashley Runyon is a Physician’s Assistant. The chapter also gets a lot of help from Lisa Weier. Through this partnership with the hospital, the chapter has monthly “skills nights”. At these “skill nights”, students meet with a professional from the local community to hear about their career and then practice a skill with that professional. Some skills that the chapter has done include suturing, pharmacy, optometry, lab science, casting, etc. Not only do these events allow for the students to ask questions, but they also get to hear firsthand stories and experiences from the professional and create their own experience doing neat things like putting a cast on a friend’s arm or suturing a chicken breast back together. It is a very easy and hands-on way for students to figure out things that they may or may not enjoy doing someday as a part of their career. At this year’s HOSA International Leadership Conference Alexis and the Avon students spent a lot of time at the HOSA Expo, which is a huge career and college fair. The expo included many booths and interactive exhibits that were set up so that students could practice intubating a patient, suturing wounds, performing different procedures using virtual reality glasses, etc. While at the expo, both Courtney and McKenna chose to donate blood. There were also many seminars and panels that were going on throughout the conference that featured professionals sharing their own personal experiences and career paths as well as sessions that were tailored specifically to leadership qualities. One of the most exciting parts of the conference is the opening session that is held the first night. Students are seated by state and are usually given some sort of flashing, obnoxious prop (similar to circus toys). There is a flag ceremony to introduce each state, country or territory with students going wild representing their state when it is announced. During this ceremony, scholarship winners from the year are recognized, yearly service projects are talked about (Be the Match) and have a keynote speaker. This year’s keynote speaker was a pediatric oncologist who is Associate Professor at Baylor University and a HOSA alumni. At the conference, Erica Cahoy competed in the clinical lab science competition. The first round of the event was a written test. Qualifying students then move on to the second round which is the skills event. In Erica’s event, the skills included things like ABO blood typing, inoculating an agar plate, examining urine samples, etc. For each of the events there are typically between 8 and 10 skills that have to be known how to do. For the event itself, the student only has to be able to perform 1-3 of the listed skills. They are secret events so the students do not know what skills they will be asked to perform until they get into the room with the judges. The judges expect the students to be able to perform the desired skill following a specific judging rubric. The student earns points by completing each step on the rubric. The winner is then determined by combining scores from the written exam and the skills performed. Courtney, McKenna, Landon and Caleb participated in the HOSA Quiz Bowl competition. In round one of the competition, the students take a written exam. Unfortunately, at the conference, the Avon HOSA quiz bowl team did not qualify to move on to round 2, which would have been an actual quiz bowl competition. The questions come from a mix of health care related, parliamentary procedure questions and HOSA history questions. The quiz bowl team was surprised by some of the questions that were asked of them at the conference competition, with questions such as “Which state joined HOSA in 1983?” While they were prepared for the health and science questions, the other types of questions were not expected. It was a great learning experience and now they will know how to be better prepared for next year’s competition. On the free day of the conference, Alexis and the Avon students spent time in downtown Houston and went to an aquarium. The aquarium had interesting exhibits, plus an area to pet manta rays and a few carnival rides. The group also visited Minute Maid Field, where the Houston Astros play. For Alexis, she truly enjoys being able to take the students to the annual International Leadership conference. There are so many networking opportunities and chances to connect with other chapters from around the world. Not only does one get to mingle with both students and advisors globally, but they also get to hear people’s stories about all the creative and interesting projects different chapters are doing. The conference exposes the students to so many opportunities that they simply do not know about because they are from a small town in South Dakota. She hoped that going into the conference that her students would soak up and take part in as much of the information and opportunities that the conference provides. This was Alexis’ third time attending the International Leadership Conference. With each year being an incredible experience Alexis is hopeful that she will be able to bring Avon students to next year’s conference in Nashville. When asked what she thought her students that attended the HOSA International Leadership Conference had gotten out of the experience, Alexis said that one of the biggest take aways from the event was just being able to see how large the HOSA organization as a whole truly is. It was an incredible experience to see how many people are involved in the organization globally. Pin-trading is a big part of the conference, so the students go to trade pins with kids from different states, and hear a little bit about where they were from, their school and HOSA experiences, etc. Networking and being able to meet people from all walks of life is definitely one of the lasting experiences the Avon students will have from the event. Alexis could not be prouder of her HOSA students that competed at the state and international levels. She leaves the community with these words about upcoming HOSA events, “Nothing is planned so far, but stay tuned one school starts up again!”