ALBANY, GA - The 2017 Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership (GOAL) winner was announced this afternoon during the Albany Rotary’s weekly meeting. Nilkumar “Nil” Patel, Electronics and Engineering Technology student, will represent Albany Tech as this year’s GOAL Student of the Year.
Nilkumar “Nil” Patel was nominated for the program by his instructor Dennis Courtney, Engineering Technology instructor at Albany Tech, who cited him as a student demonstrating superior academic performance and remarkable leadership abilities in the classroom and the community.
An active member and Captain of Albany Tech’s Titan Alliance Robotics Team, Patel has dedicated many hours to community outreach by helping students and adults learn about STEM careers in design, construction, and computer programming. He was instrumental in establishing a robotics team at Terrell County High School in 2015. He is a dual enrolled high school student from Terrell County High School who has maintained better than a 4.0 GPA and will be graduating this year in the top 10 percent of his class.
“Nil is a great young leader and will make an excellent computer engineer one day,” said Courtney. “He is a stand alone amongst his peers and is highly respected by all.”
Patel will have the opportunity to compete at the Regional Competition for GOAL, which will be held for the Southwest Georgia consortium for the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) on February 21, 2017, at Southern Regional Technical College’s Tifton campus. He will then move on to compete at the State GOAL competition to be held April 11-13 in Atlanta. The state winner is the official spokesperson for technical education in Georgia for 2017.