Decatur High School (DHS) senior Nia Hinson won first place in the SkillsUSA Georgia State nurse assisting competition on Mar. 9-11. As state champion, Hinson will go on to compete at the SkillsUSA national competition in June representing the state of Georgia. 

Preparation for the conference included rigorous study for the nursing skills test and submitting a resume. 

“It was a really fun experience, but really tedious because I had to study ahead of my curriculum in order to do well on the test,” Hinson said. 

This year’s conference consisted of more than 9,000 attendees including sixteen students and three advisors from the Decatur Career Academy (DCA). 

“The DCA students competed in 12 competitions, attended career-related seminars, and interacted with business and industry partners with hands-on activities at the Career Expo,” club advisor and DHS architecture teacher Mario Moore said. 

Six DHS students competed and took top-three honors. Hinson won first place in the Nurse Assisting category and qualified for nationals. Sophomores Robert Nobles and Jaemin Park both placed second in their categories of Construction Math and Related Technical Math, respectively. Junior Finn Daniel also placed second in Basic Drawing. Junior Mara Ferent won second place in Architecture Drawing, and sophomore Logan Cesare won third place in Mathematical Concepts.

Nia Hinson also participates in DHS’s new nursing program, the Emory Nursing Learning Center (ENLC). She largely credits this program with helping her prepare for this competition. 

“This program has really advanced my learning in a way that I don’t think any other program at Decatur offers. It is 100% in real facilities with real training, with synchronous and asynchronous learning. The hands-on labs aspect of it is really cool, I get to do real nursing skills on dummies,” Hinson said.