DECA, The Distributive Education Club of America, was founded in 1946 in Memphis, Tennessee as a career and technical organization to encourage high school and collegiate students to pursue careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management. Since its founding, DECA has expanded to include chapters in more than 4,000 high schools and universities across the United States, Canada among other countries.

In 2024, Cathedral High School was established its chapter, led by business and accounting teacher, Jeff Giles. 

Organizations like DECA are Career and Technical Student Organizations designed to give students real-world experiences through competitive events and conferences. Cathedral High School currently offers only one CTSO, DECA.  

Cathedral’s DECA Season began in December 2024  when each student was examined based on their competitive events. On January 14th 2025, 77 students took part in districts, where 51 will move onto the next stage, the State Career Development Conference (SCDC)  in downtown Indianapolis. Students who make it to the Top 4 will move onto the international stage, the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. 

At the State Career and Development Conference, students will complete a 100-question exam prior to competing in two interview roleplay competitions. In roleplay competitions, in their individual/group categories such as Entrepreneurship, students (the entrepreneur/s) will be given a prompt and have ten minutes to come up with a pitch to a judge (investor). Students’ scores are based on how well they are judged for their interviews and their exams. Students who score well enough in the initial stage will move onto the finals, and partake in one last interview competition, where they will then find out if they make it to ICDC. 

Tanner Wernke ‘26 made it to the State Finale in 2025 but placed 5th. Wernke said, “Making it to the State Finale for SCDC was a very exciting and rewarding experience. I was very proud to make it so far and it was one of my biggest accomplishments in my high school career.” 

This year, Cathedral’s DECA nominated freshman Grant Reid for a Vice Presidential Position for the entire Indiana DECA. Reid will go before the Election Session at SCDC, where his nomination will be voted on by 2 delegates from each of the 50 representative schools.

Giles emphasized the importance of the organization for students’ future careers, “DECA, specifically, is important because it’s a business competition club that offers real world experience for students, so they are able to learn about different categories for business and prepare for competition with roleplays and tests. The roleplays are important because they’re taking real business challenges and having to come up with a solution on the spot. They are given 10-15 minutes and immediately go into a judge. It’s high pressure, they have to think on their feet and it all helps out in the real business world.”