EAST LOS ANGELES : Student’s Design Earns Top Honors

Alicia Garcia De Leon won a national gold medal for a promotional bulletin board that she pieced together with cardboard, wood scraps and clay.

She received the award in the advertising design category at the National Skills Championships of the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America in Kansas City, Mo., June 30. The conference offered a chance for students to demonstrate their job skills in more than 50 categories.

Garcia De Leon, a 22-year-old full-time student at East Los Angeles Occupational Center, designed and built the four-foot-square bulletin board under the direction of her teacher, Irene Saavedra. Garcia De Leon was one of three students sent by the center this year, and the center’s first to return with a gold medal in the seven years it has participated in the competition.

She finished first in her category, ahead of about 150 vocational students from the United States, Canada, Guam and Puerto Rico. Her design includes 3-dimensional attachments: sculpted clay hands and wooden stairs. The board depicts a stairway ascending to a city that Garcia DeLeon said represents the working world.