PARIS — On March 21, four students from the Engineering and Architectural Design program at Oxford Hills Technical School traveled to Norwich University to participate in the Junior Architecture Studio Day in Northfield, Vermont.

Designed to help familiarize high school juniors with the School of Architecture at Norwich University the day included campus tours, meeting with faculty, Q & A with current students and a design competition.

Norwich architecture program director Danny Sagan along with a selection of Norwich architecture students walked the high-schoolers, with participants from all over New England, through a simple design problem and then allowed the students to work individually with a limited amount of time and materials to come up with a solution in model form.

After a brief deliberation, junior Peter Misner of Harrison was determined to be the winner of the first-place prize of a $25,000 scholarship to Norwich University. Peter’s design “seemed self-assured … while following the laws of symmetry and composition that are familiar. It did it in a way that was well-proportioned and elegant,” according to Sagan.

The Engineering and Architectural Design program is a new program at Oxford Hills Technical school evolved from what was the computer-aided drafting program. EAD taught by registered architect Daelynn A. Elizabeth is now focused more on design fundamentals, construction methods and management as well as real world architectural practice.

The Oxford Hills students have been working on several local community projects doing field measurements, documenting/drafting and coming up with conceptual designs. Having formerly taught second-year design studio for the Architecture Program at University of Maine at Augusta, Elizabeth is impressed with the level to which these high school students are performing and responding to more advanced design curriculum.