Senior Network Admin -> Network Engineer trajectory

I've been debating for the past few months which route I wanted to take next in my career. I'm currently a "senior network administrator" with about 5 years of experience. At first I thought it was just a title, but I do think i'm doing that kind of work. I'm in charge of the infrastructure of a medium sized local financial institution with 15 branches and about 250 employees. While I don't have anyone reporting to me officially, the help desk (two people) are pretty much under orders to take anything I delegate to them.

Currently, I'm doing a redesign of the network (it is completely flat, including voice) as well as some migrations to off site data centers. I'm also doing all the planning for that project as well as a couple others.

I was debating management vs more of an engineer/architect route. As much as I enjoy the challenge of leadership (I've been there before), I think I want to go more of the latter role.

Experience and what I know about myself: I have background in Cisco, Dell, and now Juniper networking equipment (the former is my most extensive, but I'm currently rolling out Juniper equipment to replace really old Dell equipment). My experience includes everything from deploying to maintaining and includes wireless and VOIP. I also have a decent background in Linux, VMware (considering NV certification), firewalls, and SAN's. I admit I am a "big picture" kind of person and love to see how everything interacts, but struggle more when it gets down to the finer details of things.

I'd like to go more of the network engineer/architect route. I absolutely love networking. What I'm wondering is what is the best thing I can do to prepare myself in order to merge into that lane from administration. I'm finishing up my bachelor's (IT related) and thinking of starting to go down the certificate route just to kind of bolster both the knowledge and for the resume padding for the future but am not sure what the best angle is to give me a shot into that field. There are several Fortune 500 companies in my city and I think I would love to jump into positions where there is more structure.

Anyway, any advice for me at this point (even if it's "Don't do it" because of where I'm at) would be much appreciated.