Employees share their skills to support local high school competition

When Colstrip High School’s Business Professionals of America Club hosted a regional contest in December, three PPL Montana employees were on hand to share their expertise as judges of the academic competitions.

Jerry Blythe, Robin Sterrett and Loy Martens used their knowledge of computer programming and financial analysis to help judge at the BPA Regional Conference, where more than 100 students from 10 schools tested their business savvy in areas such as financial services, information technology, management, marketing, human resources, and administrative support.

“The PPL Montana judges’ knowledge and background in the events they were judging was invaluable,” said Ellen LeTang, a teacher at Colstrip High School and BPA advisor. “Many of the visiting students and teachers complimented us on the quality of our judges.”

Martens, a staff accountant for PPL Montana, judged the Financial Analyst Team event. Sterrett, work scheduler, and Blythe, technology support specialist, were in charge of judging and grading the teams working on digital media as well as those working on computer programming.

“PPL Montana is very committed to supporting our local schools and communities whenever we can,” said Joe Kampf, manager-Information Services, who recruited employees to judge the regional conference at Colstrip High School on Dec. 14. “We’re proud to be able to help the school continue its efforts in exposing our future business leaders to the technologies commonly used in today’s industries.”

LeTang credits the dedicated judges with helping 23 Colstrip students move on to the next level of competition, noting that Colstrip and other Montana students have been very successful in prior competitions.