Way to Go: Brandon Boyle, North Babylon

A North Babylon High School senior with an eye for architecture soon will see his award-winning design become reality.

Brandon Boyle, who studies architectural design at Western Suffolk BOCES' Wilson Technological Center in Dix Hills, won a national contest that challenged teens to design a walkway entrance to SkillsUSA's National Leadership Center in Leesburg, Virginia.

Boyle designed a circular brick walkway with a series of benches and planters to beautify the area, using Google SketchUp, a three-dimensional modeling program.

His design took the top award out of 32 entries nationwide, seven of which came from Wilson Tech students. The entries were reviewed by a committee of architects and a SkillsUSA alumnus from The Beck Group in Dallas.

"It's a pretty great honor," said Boyle, 18. "It's going to be cool when I go there to see it."

He received a $2,000 travel stipend for himself and a SkillsUSA adviser to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the walkway during the organization's 50th birthday celebration in Leesburg on May 8.

Boyle is a member of Wilson Tech's National Technical Honor Society and of Renaissance, a reward program for excellence in attendance and academics. He plans to study architecture this fall at the New York Institute of Technology.

SkillsUSA is a career and technical student organization striving to improve the quality of the nation's skilled workforce.