Background Information

On Skills Day, Southwestern joins with South Coast Educational Service District (SCESD) to bring in-district high school students to campus to compete in a variety of contests.  The ten high schools that participate include:  Powers, Myrtle Point, Coquille, Reedsport, North Bend, Marshfield, Bandon, Pacific, Gold Beach and Brookings. 

2008 will be our 33rd year of participating in this fun day.  Skills Day was originally sponsored by SCESD and held at Southwestern.  Early contest titles varied from typing and shorthand, to the log boom run and welding.  Specific contests evolve and vary from year to year.  Today’s contests titles include:  AutoCad, sidewalk chalk art and garage band.  In 2000, Southwestern took on most of the details for the Day, with SCESD providing some support.  In 2003, Math Day was integrated with Skills Day in an effort to bring professional tech contestants together with academic contestants and to help reduce costs for travel and time away from the schools.  Last year we had approximately 400 students pre-registered for the day.

Registration forms are due March 27, 2008 for the April 3, 2008 contests.  High school instructors compile lists of interested students and submit them to the college.  Some contests have unlimited openings, others have only a few slots per school available.  In order to be certain that you have a space, it is advised that you register as early as possible.  However, some contests may still have openings the day of the contest and students may be able to register at the actual contest.  Some students register for several contests, and will have to choose which contest they wish to compete in first/the most, paying attention to the limited time offerings for some of the contests.   Most contests will take place from 9 am-12 pm.  Some contests have slightly different check-in arrangements; and some run longer.

The challenge exams are not expected to take the full 4 hour block allotted; depending upon the individual student aptitude for the contest area:

• CS 101 Challenge Exam (Computers in Society):  approximately 2-3 hours
• CS 120 Challenge Exams (Concepts of Computing):  approximately 2-3 hours
• CS 125W Challenge Exam (Word Processing Applications--Microsoft):  approximately 1 ½ - 2 hrs
• CS 140 Challenge Exam (Intro to XP Operating Systems):  approximately 1 ½ - 2 hrs