ELKMONT'S COLEMAN COOK LOVES ENGINEERING

The Athens News Courier has an article about one of our Elkmont young folk.  You can click on this LINK to read the whole article or you have until Wednesday to pick up a hard copy at the Athens office.

Article Highlights:
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. As he grew older, he joined 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. 

Coleman is 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.

His LabVIEW credentials landed Cook an internship at Electrifier 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.”

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