A 16-year-old College of Southern Nevada high school student will represent Nevada during the Microsoft Office Specialist U.S. National Championship.
The competition tests student skills on using Microsoft Office products, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The skill-based timed exams test students on their mastery of the functions. CSN teaches all the Microsoft Office skills in IS 101, which is a digital literacy course, and as part of the coursework, students take the certifications exams.
Tyler Guthrie, who attend CSN High School on the Charleston Campus, scored high enough on the Excel certification exam that he will represent Nevada during a national conference and competition in Dallas in June.
“This is our first year using the Microsoft Offices exams and for us to come out of the gate and have a state champion, we’re extremely proud and pleased,” said Dr. Mark Taormino, program director of digital literacy. “We work very hard on our curriculum and this tells us we’re on the right path here for our students.”
The win came as a bit of a surprise for Tyler, who overcame some personal tragedy in the fall semester and was failing practice exams the day before the test.
“For some reason, I try to do it really fast. With cell ranges, I would just read them completely wrong. The knowledge was there, and I knew everything I had to know, but I was just messing trivial things up,” Tyler said.
Tyler and his mother will attend the conference and competition in June where Tyler will face off against students representing the other states. At 16, Tyler barely meets the minimum age range for the competition, students up to age 22 will be able to compete.
Advancing to the national competition is particularly special for Tyler. In the fall, Tyler lost his stepfather to suicide and for a while, Tyler said he had no desire to perform well academically.
“I became more careless with my work, I didn’t care to do my homework, I didn’t care what scores I got on my test,” he said.
Time, healing, forgiveness and an English essay helped Tyler get back on track. His professor assigned the class to write about their personal belief statements. Tyler said he chose to write about forgiveness. During that process, he realized that he began to care more about school again after he forgave his stepfather for killing himself.
“Until I wrote the essay, I wasn’t aware that it had happened. Once I had to think about my belief statement, I realized that once I forgave him I did a lot better,” he said.
Tyler’s digital literacy skills, including his mastery of excel, will serve him well, as Tyler plans to pursue a career in computer science once he finishes high school and his time at CSN. Right now, he’s looking at transferring to UNLV for a bachelor’s degree.
For more about CSN, visit csn.edu.
[If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.]