The members of the Family, Career & Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) will spend the next few weeks finalizing their Students Taking Action with Recognition (STAR) event projects for the State competition, which will take place on March 5 to 7 at the Horizon Convention Center in Muncie. According to Sanjana Jain, FCCLA president and senior, all meetings leading up to the State competition are focused on improving each member’s individual STAR event projects. Each project is a deep dive into family and consumer science careers such as fashion construction, sports nutrition or early childhood education.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the club had experienced a decrease in size but is now made up of many newer members. “It’s a lot of people second time going. I think everyone’s really excited and there’s a lot of first timers too. I think everyone’s pretty pumped up for it,” Jain said.

According to FCCLA co-adviser Faith Dalton, the State competition is the most important competition for many of the FCCLA members. Dalton said even though they are all in a club, each project is done independently.

“At State, all the kids give a ten minute presentation of a subject they’ve been working on for the past few months to a panel of judges. When they are finished, the next person comes in. Nationals is the exact same format, exact same project as State. As for myself, I will help run the competition,” Dalton said. By Anthony Pho