Through the years the business world changes and so has the Business Department at Rushville Consolidated High School. Department head Sharon Miller, Julie Wainwright and Diane Personett work together to help their students prepare for life.

“We used to train them for secretarial, specific jobs. Now we’re just trying to give them skills that are used in all kinds of jobs and personal life,” Miller explained.

“We think we present a lot of life skills,” Personett commented. “Some of our courses cover balancing your check books and that sort of things. Keyboarding is universally used and then (there are) the computer skills. We try to teach them so that they can not only go to other classes here and have those skills but they go out to college and then the professor is teaching them about science, but he says do a spread sheet and they know how to do that by having had our classes. We still feel like we’re prepping them, but more general skills instead of specific business skills, more life skills things.”

Wainwright added that students are required to do role playing where they have to get up and give presentations, providing them with skills needed as they go on to college or vocational school.

Classes include computer applications like PowerPoint, Excel, Desktop Publishing and web design. Accounting is offered some years, depending on enrollment.

“All freshmen have to take Digital Communication Tools,” Miller said. “Basically, it’s learning to control the keyboard.”

“That’s what was formerly keyboarding, formerly typing,” Wainwright added.

“Back when we offered shorthand it was mostly girls studying secretarial and we had the COE where they went out and worked half days,” Miller recalled. “We still have a lot of girls out there in the community that went through that program that have good jobs in Rushville.”

The biggest changes in the field of business education has been in technology.

“We’ve gone from manual typewriters to computers,” Miller remarked.

“Most of the students are just preparing for college or vocational school. It has become that you need more training between here and the job market,” Personett added.

All three instructors strongly advocated students getting some form of higher education or training before entering the business world.

The students have changed as well.

“We’ve always had good students and bad students, but it seems like they’re not as conscientious as they used to be,” Miller observed. “Some of them are very knowledgeable and some of them think they know more than they really do.”

“It’s harder for us to compete because they have so much electronic stimulation and fancy things and all that. Of course, because we don’t sing it or make a video about it,” Personett reflected. “They get so much more stimulation than they used to and have so many more inputs of information.”