BURRILLVILLE – A senior at Burrillville High School will attend Johnson & Wales University in Providence with a full four year scholarship, thanks to his involvement and success with the school district’s chapter of SkillsUSA.
Bronco Tyler Miles became vice president of the national division of the organization last year, making him the first ever to student from Burrillville to serve in a national SkillsUSA leadership role. Running on a platform of diversity, equity and inclusion, Miles became the first national officer to represent the state of Rhode Island since 2008 last year.
“Tyler’s been heavily involved in SkillsUSA during his student career at the high school, and he’s currently the SkillsUSA vice president,” explained Supt. Michael Sollitto in announcing the award to members of the Burrillville School Committee.
The generous scholarship was announced at the SkillsUSA Rhode Island Awards Ceremony at The Vets in Providence on Wednesday, March 27, where many other high school and middle school students from Burrillville were also honored, and the town’s chapter of the organization was named a Quality Chapter and Chapter of Distinction.
“We were one of only two schools in the state that were recognized as schools of distinction so kudos to them,” Sollitto said.
“The middle school did very well in their awards in their competitions as well as our high school teams,” he added.
Burrillville Middle School and the Burrillville High School PLTW Engineering Pathway swept the SkillsUSA gold, silver, and bronze medals in the category of Urban & Search and Rescue. Two Bronco teams took the respective gold and silver medals for Career Pathways – Showcase Industrial and Engineering Technology, and another town team took silver for Career Pathways – Human Services.
Individual students also took home awards, with Bronco Abigail Bassett winning the gold medal in Extemporaneous Speaking, and Alex Pristawa taking the bronze for Computer Programming.
BHS junior Caitlin Lozeau, meanwhile, was named a SkillsUSA Rhode Island State officer.
Christopher Piling, a CTE construction management teacher at BHS who was named the national SkillsUSA Outstanding Educator of the Year in 2023, serves as advisor of the Burrillville chapter along with Andrew Aldrich, a Project Lead The Way pre-engineering instructor who was named SkillsUSA Rhode Island CTE Educator of the Year the previous year.
Nine students from Burrillville will now move on to the national competition in Atlanta, Ga. in June.
“We are proud of all our Bronco competitors student leaders,” noted Burrillville Public Schools.
