Milton students test skills on national stage

By JACQUELINE CAIN | Staff Writer
jackie@miltonindependent.com

Three Milton students will join 5,600 high school and college students to take over a Kansas City, Mo. convention center for a national skills conference from June 19-24.

Lauren Bushey, Tanner Palermo and Alexis Noel will represent Milton in the SkillsUSA contest where students will race against the clock and one another to demonstrate expertise in crime scene investigation, machining, medical assistance, culinary arts and more. Scholarships, trade tools and other prizes await winners of each competition.

SkillsUSA is a national non-profit that prepares students for trades and technical careers. Tech centers nationwide, including 16 in Vermont, have SkillsUSA chapters whose programs set industry standards for nearly 100 occupations, said Jane Donahue-Holt, executive director of SkillsUSA Vermont.

Bushey, Palermo and Noel competed with more than 600 students in the Vermont Skills and Leadership Conference, held at sites around Chittenden County April 6 and 7. Now they’re preparing for the nationals.

Lauren Bushey

“I was scared out of my mind,” Lauren Bushey said about the day she competed against 11 other Vermont chefs-in-training for a chance to test her skills on a national stage.

Bushey was up and ready to cook at 6:45 a.m. on April 7 in the strict attire of a chef.

“Your uniform has to be perfect: No jewelry, no visible tattoos. I had to bring a separate uniform in case mine got dirty,” Bushey said. “I brought my own box of utensils — tongs, spoons, spatulas — and my own cast-iron skillet.”

During the Vermont competition, Bushey, who graduated in May from the Professional Foods program at Center for Technology, Essex, had to “fabricate” a chicken, culinary-speak for butchering the whole bird.

After four hours in the kitchen, she presented the New England Culinary Institute judges with a stuffed chicken breast with an intricate demi-glace, potatoes au gratin and par-cooked broccoli, as well as a potato-leek soup appetizer.

Fabricating the chicken was the contest’s only rules: Bushey created the menu from scratch, using only ingredients available to her in a kitchen at The Inn at Essex.

Bushey spent time in between classes and working in the kitchen at The Colonial Room at Essex Tech to test and tweak her menu.

“The first thing I made was an herb-stuffed chicken with all sorts of fresh herbs, covered in butter to get a nice crust on it. Then I made a quick salsa,” she said. “My chefs told me that’s a ‘my generation’ dish. They’re sticklers when it comes to hot food on cold food.”

She realized to win the competition, she needed to heed the teacher’s advice: Her chef, John Dowman, is a former NECI instructor, and he knows what the judges look for, Bushey said.

“It’s about what the judges will like,” she said.

Dowman said Bushey is naturally passionate about food, which shows in the dishes she makes. He attributes her success in the statewide competition to her attention to detail. In his seven years as an instructor at Essex Tech, Dowman has had students place second and fourth in national SkillsUSA competitions.

“Vermont is very competitive in culinary,” he said, crediting NECI, which has a campus in Montpelier. “They put this bar up there, and our students have to jump to that certain height. Once we reach the national competition, our students are at a high level.”

Bushey has seen an outline of the menu she’ll prepare in Kansas City and only feels apprehensive about one test: poaching salmon.

“On my first try I overcooked the salmon a little, and it wasn’t very good,” she said, though she learned from the mistake.

“Carry-over cooking is when you take your food off your heat source and it continues to cook up to another 5 degrees or so,” Bushey explained. “So, I cooked it to 150 and didn’t realize it would carry over. I need to cook it to 145. It’s a learning process.”

Tanner Palermo and Alexis Noel

Tanner Palermo, Alexis Noel and their partner, Gage Bergeron of Burlington, came upon a Dodge Durango, abandoned in a parking lot. They saw blood spatter, a discarded ski mask and bullet casings nearby.

The three had to find and collect evidence of a stolen vehicle, an armed robbery and a police chase and write up a legible report recounting what happened. They had one hour to close the case.

The three Burlington Technical Center seniors thought the scenario, orchestrated by their criminal justice instructor, David Scibek, at The Sheraton Hotel in South Burlington on April 7, was intense, but they solved it. The team earned 590 points out of a possible 600, securing their position to compete in Kansas City.

“It was pretty stressful to cram everything into an hour,” Noel said, adding that if it were a normal school exercise, they’d have most of the day to solve it.

During the Vermont crime scene investigation competition, Noel, Palermo and Bergeron each had to collect evidence — make fingerprints, take photos, analyze blood spatter — and they regrouped to write the report together, Noel said. The national competition will be similar, though the students don’t know what the crime scene might entail.

“We’re pretty much going in blind to this one,” Palermo said. “We know we have a half-hour to process it, then we’ll have a half-hour to write and document it.”

With 50 other teams doing the same thing, it’s high competition, Palermo added. But Scibek thinks his students are on track for success.

“Tanner is clearly interested in law enforcement as a career,” he said. “[And Alexis] truly loves the scientific process. You’ll see Alexis on CNN someday. She’s going to be a forensic expert. She’s that passionate about it.”

Scibek, a Burlington Tech teacher since he retired from the Burlington Police Department in 2008, adapts his curriculum so all his students compete in the statewide SkillsUSA competition. Still, he concedes his students will face some very stiff competitors nationally.

“Some of these high school programs are like mini police academies,” he said. “I’m not trying to make little cops out of kids.”

Scibek requires his students to compete so they can work under pressure in a supportive environment before they land a career. He also likes to give students the opportunity to travel, he said.

“We’re rural in Vermont,” he said. By traveling to compete nationally, Scibek’s students “get a clearer picture of how big the world is. Some kids have never flown,” he said – including Palermo.

Scibek and Donahue-Holt both stressed how huge the event is. The convention center’s upstairs floor is outfitted for competitions in 96 different trades, Donahue-Holt said.

“There’s a space with ovens for the culinary arts students, jet engines for the aviation competition. There’s masonry being done; there’s a paint booth for the auto body competition,” she said.

Scibek added it takes 20 minutes to walk from one end of the center to another.
“The scope is unbelievable,” he said. “If you’re lucky enough to win ... you’ve demonstrated confidence in a field most don’t study, for any of these competitions.”