Shared skills
A friendship leads to competition success
A friendship, along with support from a local college and a telecommunications cooperative, led to shining success at the SkillsUSA state and national levels for two Motlow State Community College students.
Mariam Tanas and Gabby Miller each took home gold medals in the postsecondary category at the SkillsUSA State Leadership and Skills Conference in April in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Mariam competed in Cisco internetworking, and Gabby participated in telecommunications cabling. The two went on to the SkillsUSA national competition in their respective categories in June in Atlanta, where Gabby took bronze at the college level, and Mariam placed in the top 10.
The competitors met during a shared class, according to former Motlow SkillsUSA lead advisor Joy Rich. Mariam initially convinced Gabby to join the career and technical organization, which serves hundreds of thousands of students. Mariam mentored her friend through the process of learning to compete in telecommunications cabling, a category Mariam won at the state and national levels in 2022. Both categories the women competed in this year are heavily male-dominated, according to Motlow information technology instructor Joseph Marco, who built them a practice wall in the college’s lab where they trained. They received donated fiber equipment from Ben Lomand Connect to practice the cabling skills they needed for the contest.
“Mariam was a very shy student when I met her, and after her experience in SkillsUSA as a competitor I saw her finding her voice and convinced her to run for SkillsUSA Tennessee postsecondary state office,” Joy says. “She won her election and has served as a Tennessee SkillsUSA collegiate officer this year.”
In that position, Mariam presided over six campuses across Middle Tennessee and she also was elected to serve as Tennessee SkillsUSA state treasurer.
Mariam has begun a paid position as a cybersecurity research assistant at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and she plans to transfer to the institution as a full-time cybersecurity student when she finishes her Motlow classes in the fall.
To learn more about SkillsUSA, visit the SkillsUSA website, and discover how large this organization is, the disciplines it covers and how industry can get involved!
