CUMMING -- Lanier Technical College instructors nominated 33 students for the Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership, or GOAL, competition, 10 of whom are from Forsyth County.

According to Kari Register, coordinator for the college’s program, GOAL is a statewide initiative of the Technical College System of Georgia that honors “excellence in academics and leadership among the state’s technical college students.”

“The purpose of the GOAL program is to spotlight the outstanding achievement by students in Georgia’s technical colleges and to emphasize the importance of technical education in today’s global workforce,” Register said.

Winners are selected at each of the state’s 22 technical colleges as well as one Board of Regents college with a technical education division.

A screening committee of administrators at Lanier Tech will review each of the instructor’s nominations and conduct interviews with the students.

After nominees have been ranked, four finalists will be chosen to compete to the Lanier Tech’s GOAL winner for 2017.

Those finalists will take part in another round of interviews and evaluations by a selection committee of representatives from the local business and industry community who will consider the students’ qualities such as academic achievement, personal character, leadership abilities and enthusiasm for technical education.

The college’s GOAL winner will move onto the regional level, where three from each of the three regions are selected as finalists. The nine regional finalists will compete for the title of state GOAL winner.

The student who earns that title is awarded the responsibility of traveling the state as ambassador for the entire technical college system. To make that travel easier, the winner also receives a new car.