The Distinguished Career Award is based on distinguished and meritorious service and achievement in career and life in general. Nominees must be a graduate or former student of the university. This year’s recipient, Tim Boyle is a 1988 graduate of William Penn with a double major in Industrial Technology and Business Management.
He started his career at Pirelli Armstrong Tire Corporation in Des Moines as a foreman right after graduation. In 1990, he left that position for more opportunities to grow and landed a position as Research & Development Coordinator with Musco Sports Lighting, LLC.
His story began with a visit to William Penn. “I chose William Penn because I still wanted to play football and I wanted to get a technical degree with a business emphasis. After meeting Dr. Jim Drost, I quickly chose William Penn. I valued the real-world experience that he brought to his classroom.
“As a four-year starter on the football team, captain for two years, I found that playing offensive line at the college level demonstrated how eleven players each need to do their job successfully and unselfishly to move the ball down the field. I’ve used this mentality throughout my career. Blending these two experiences has been a large part of my success as a leader and team member in my career,” Boyle related.
Boyle has been a 35-year team member at Musco with 10 years serving on the Executive Leadership Team. From 1990-1995, Boyle acted as a coordinator for Research & Development (R&D) at Musco Sports Lighting, LLC, one of four team members in R&D in 1990. Boyle was responsible for part design, drawing creation, prototyping, and new product testing. New products released during this time were Musco’s Light Structure System and Mirtran. Light Structure System integrated the pole and base, crossarms, light fixtures, remote electrical enclosures, and wire harnesses into a “5 Easy Piece System” that creates a full package, makes installation easier, and makes the system more reliable.
Mirtran is a light fixture specifically designed for NASCAR racetracks. Charlotte Motor Speedway was the first track to be lit in 1992 with Mirtran. Musco earned several lighting accolades for this project. Several tracks were lit with Mirtran in the following years.
From 1995-2005, Boyle served as R&D Engineer while also taking on some management tasks. He managed the prototype shop, became a Test Engineer, and started the creation of a new Product Development team that would be responsible for sustaining engineering and engineering drawings/documents. During this time frame, Boyle and Musco obtained the first of several patents.
New products in this time frame were enhancements to Mirtan, 2K Stadium Fixture, Instant Restrike capability, and Light-Structure Green (LSG). 2K Stadium Fixture is a fixture utilizing a 2000 watt lamp that provided more lumens than the standard 1500 watt lamp. Thin film dielectric coating was applied to the lamp to enhance glare control and efficiency.
Light Structure Green (LSG) fixture combined several technical components into a fixture that produced 50% more lumens with less energy. This reduced the number of fixtures and cost to light an area. This was also the first product that has a 25-year warranty based on its reliability. Myron Gordon (co-owner) and Boyle were granted 16 utility patents and several design patents on this one product.
With company success, Boyle became R&D Manager in 2005 and continued in this role until 2015. This brought on more management responsibilities with budgeting, product planning, and team building.
This era was technically very challenging with LED lights becoming more viable as a large area light source. With very successful product in LSG, they had to reinvent their current product to maintain market share. High fixture cost was the issue initially, but after several design iterations, costs became more feasible for the sports market to begin to buy. Boyle helped to bring more of the electronic development in-house, growing the R&D team from 6 to 50 in this period.
Things were moving fast! New products/projects in this era were lighting the White House with LED, developing a test field fully lit with LED, lighting the Bay Bridge with LED, lighting three large arenas with LED, and installing LED lighting in the Lake Point Baseball complex. Most of these were one-off projects where Tim and his team were learning how to build and apply LED light fixtures.
As Vice President of R&D, from 2015-2024, Boyle now became a member of the Executive Leadership Team at Musco. Another challenging era. R&D team grew from 40 to 135. Bringing more capabilities in-house as products required more electronic features.
New Products in this era were the 1500 watt welded fin fixture, networking to the poles for communicating to each fixture, light shows, RGB fixtures, Musco designed/built drivers.
The 1500 watt welded fin fixture brought cost down enough that no more HID fixtures were sold.
During this time, Musco acquired HandEra, an Electronics Engineering group in Des Moines, and integrated them into R&D. Working together, Boyle led the team in designing an LED driver, equipped a factory, and started building Musco drivers.
“As part of Exec Leadership Team, managed through COVID, was an unprecedented time that wasn’t taught in college. We kept the team-moving and got through successfully and then had to manage thru supply chain issues by deciding on alternative parts and keeping our product quality and 25-year warranty in mind.
“We conceived a new technical team named Emerging Tech in Des Moines. This team focused on “Field of the Future” technology that were outside our normal lighting product but targeting towards the same customer. This team started to get Musco acquainted with AI and what it can do,” Boyle commented.
Continuing his thoughts, Boyle stated, “In 2024-2026, as Chief Product Development Officer, I announced my retirement and started to transition my responsibilities to others in this time period. I was very fortunate to work at Musco. I was allowed to do as much as I wanted to take on. Joe Crookham and Myron Gordon (Musco founders) were tremendous and encouraged that. Neither one of them turned down a request for a piece of equipment knowing that we were going to learn something. I always tried to learn something new every day, which was easy in my position, and I make that a goal of mine even though I’m retired. I retired in January 2026.
Boyle and his wife, Kathy, a 1992 William Penn graduate, live in Oskaloosa. They have two children. Taylor is married to Allen and they have a son Micah. TJ is a 2019 graduate of William Penn and is engaged to Jen.
Congratulations Tim, our 2026 Distinguished Career Award recipient.