SIOUX FALLS S.D. (KELO) — Kaysen Magee, Keira Briggs and Raegan Taylor are all seniors at Stanley County High School in Fort Pierre, but Friday they were in Sioux Falls at the Sanford Pentagon attending a HOSA-Future Health Professionals conference.

“I’ve been in HOSA since I was a freshman,” Briggs said. “I’ve been the president of our local chapter the past two years.”

While Briggs wants to be a pharmacist, Magee plans to study nursing.

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“I like how broad it is so that you can go into any type of specialty,” Magee said. “There’s also a lot of room for growth.”

And that flexibility is drawing Taylor to radiology.

“You can branch off a lot,” Taylor said. “You start off with just X-rays, and then you can go all the way into, like, radiation therapy.”

HOSA stands for “Health Occupation Students of America.” South Dakota Mines was among the universities represented at the conference, where science, technology, engineering and math were all front and center.

“Our students really enjoy creating impact, so joining a STEM field is a way to do that, kind of affect a lot of people all at once in a good way,” Ashli Maddox with South Dakota Mines said.

Brock Rops, executive director of South Dakota’s HOSA organization, says the event is all about reaching and inspiring young minds.

“We try to get to them as early as possible, and so we try to give kids an opportunity to kind of build confidence so by the time that they graduate they’ve got a little bit better idea,” Rops said.

Rops says more than 1,000 South Dakota students attended the conference.