July 8, 2025 – Nate Beal, Josh Drop and Walker Thompson of Davidson-Davie Community College, has won Bronze Medal in the Automated Manufacturing Technology at the SkillsUSA national championship competition. The SkillsUSA Championships took place in Atlanta June 23-27, 2025, as part of the 60th SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference (NLSC), a showcase of career and technical education students. During the conference, over 18,000 people attended the conference, with over 6600 outstanding career and technical education student state contest winners competing in over 110 different hands-on trade, technical and leadership contests. 537 North Carolina participants from 38 high schools, 29 community colleges and 4 middle schools participated in the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference.
Nate, Josh and Walker are recent graduates of Davidson-Davie and are looking to expand on their CNC Machining education by attending engineering school in the fall. We are very proud of the effort these guys put into their education at Davidson-Davie as well as their effort in the SKILLSUSA competition. This group and the other students that participated in the Automated Manufacturing Technology and CNC machining competition are true champions in their dedication to excellence in their trade and their leadership skills.
During the national competition, Nate, Josh and Walker and other students worked against the clock and each other, proving their expertise in teamwork, computer-aided drafting, cad/cam, CNC machine set up and operation, and precision measurement. All contests are run with the aid and support of industry, trade associations and labor organizations, and test competencies are set by industry. In addition, leadership contestants demonstrated their skills in several Leadership Development competitions, which included both prepared and extemporaneous speaking, engaging in both individual and team presentations.
Many thanks to the Gene Haas Foundation for their support to our students in this competition. Davidson Davie has scholarship funding available for the CNC Machining program thanks to the Gene Haas Foundation. Please contact Kerry Smith at Kerry_Smith@DavidsonDavie.edu if you have an interest in the program.
Top student winners received gold, silver and bronze medallions. Many also received prizes such as tools of their trade and/or scholarships to further their careers and education. The SkillsUSA Championships is for high school, middle school and college-level students who are members of SkillsUSA.
North Carolina was very well represented in the SkillsUSA Championships, earning a total of 78 medallions – 14 gold, 40 silver, and 24 bronze medallions.
Davidson-Davie Community College (www.DavidsonDavie.edu), which incorporated Davie County into its name in 2021, is a fully accredited, multi-campus college where students of all ages and backgrounds pursue academic and career-focused education in order to build successful futures. As one of 58 institutions within the North Carolina Community College System, Davidson-Davie offers more than 40 degree and professional certificate programs, as well as affordable college-credit coursework to students who plan to transfer to four-year schools. With a mission to serve the changing needs of students competing in a global environment, Davidson-Davie is committed to quality education, innovative and equitable learning experiences, training, and support across a wide range of 21st-century career fields.
SkillsUSA is a nonprofit partnership of education and industry founded in 1965 as Vocational Industrial Clubs of America (V.I.C.A.) to strengthen our nation’s skilled workforce. Driven by employer demand, SkillsUSA helps students develop necessary personal and workplace skills along with technical skills grounded in academics. This SkillsUSA Framework empowers every student to succeed at work and in life, while helping to close the skills gap in which millions of positions go unfilled. Through SkillsUSA’s championships program and curricula, employers have ensured schools are teaching relevant technical skills, and with SkillsUSA’s new credentialing process, they can now assess how ready potential employees are for the job. SkillsUSA has hundreds of thousands of members nationwide in high schools, middle schools and colleges, covering over 140 trade, technical and skilled service occupations, and is recognized by the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor as integral to career and technical education. With the addition of our alumni, membership last year was over 440,000. SkillsUSA receives in-kind and financial support from more than 650 national partners. SkillsUSA has served more than 14 million members since 1965. For more information, go to SkillsUSA.org and SkillsUSAnc.org.
Jared Bowman
Associate Vice President, Marketing & Communications
336.224.4664
Jared_Bowman@DavidsonDavie.edu