Tech Center gives engineering student major edge

Published 6:45 am Thursday, October 12, 2017

Coleman Cook knew from a young age that he wanted to be an engineer. In a single evening, he could put together an elaborate Lego set only to tear it down the next day and build his own creation. His favorites were roller coasters and robots.

Fast forward to high school, where Cook became deeply involved with the robotics program at Elkmont, which required him to go to the Limestone County Career Technical Center several times per week.

“Through robotics, I got interested in concept engineering, and the pre-engineering program at the tech center seemed like a natural way to explore the field,” Cook said.

To say that he excelled in the pre-engineering program would be an understatement, according to Casey Wigginton, Cook’s high school engineering teacher. “With a student like Coleman, who has such high aspirations, my job was to not get in his way and help him make his ideas a reality.”

Coleman not only earned a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Alabama in Huntsville with an ACT score of 34, he was one of only six high school students in the world to pass the Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer exam. CLAD is an industrial-level certification for the LabVIEW programming language. College engineering students often take the CLAD test if they plan on going into industrial testing or production industries.

“I used the LabView programming language extensively during robotics,” Cook, the lead programmer of his robotic team said.. “I think I passed because of my four years of experience using LabVIEW, and I did a significant amount of studying.”

Cooks’s land robotic’s teams ranked 26th and 27th internationally in 2016 and 2017, respectively. He was also the Chief Executive Officer of an underwater robotics team his senior year.

His LabVIEW credentials landed Cook an internship at Electrifil Corp., an automotive supplier in Elkmont where he was able to convert work hours into pre-engineering credits at LCCTC.

“I was the first intern to use LabVIEW to work on programming some of the machines there and did some wiring,” he said. “My time there helped me understand industrial systems tremendously and I think it gave me an major edge.”

On Oct. 3, Cook shared about his internship and the edge it has provided him now that he is in college at the North Alabama Workforce Development Conference held at Adtran Huntsville.

“I was given five minutes in a 15-minute block to speak and basically shared how internships like the one I had can benefit people pursuing a degree in an engineering field,” Cook said.

Cook was pulled in a couple of different directions when trying to settle on a major but finally settled on computer engineering because it combines his favorite fields—electronics and computer programming.

His plan is to earn his bachelor’s in four years, a rarity for engineering majors and then complete his master’s degree in one year using the Joint Undergraduate Master’s Program at UAH.

“I wouldn’t be nearly as prepared if I had not attended the tech center,” Cook said. “I probably would have spent my freshman year in college wondering what I was going to major in. But instead I know exactly what I want to do and have some experience to back me up.”

Cook hopes to work for an upper-level company doing research and computer programming once he completes his master’s degree.

Wigginton has no doubt his former student will accomplish that goal and much more.

“Coleman is going to do anything and go anywhere he wants to,” Wigginton said. “Ideas inspire him and he devotes a lot of time to make those ideas happen.”