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SOUTHFIELD—Kenneth Cook, whose career as an engineering professor at Lawrence Technological University spanned seven decades, passed away Thursday, March 21, at the age of 82.>
In a 2019 ceremony honoring Professor Cook by putting his name on an LTU laboratory, his speech included a reading from a “textbook” he described as “a hot seller” — just before it burst into flames.
A beloved teacher known for entertaining classroom presentations that made use of his professional-level skills as a magician, Cook’s LTU career began as an adjunct professor in 1964.
Cook was an LTU alumnus, graduating in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering. And his engineering career took him all over the world, from the United Kingdom to Hungary to China.
Cook stepped down as chair of the Department of Engineering Technology in LTU’s College of Engineering just last year, but still taught a full load of five classes in the Fall 2023 semester.
A native of Ubly who grew up in Michigan’s Thumb, Cook inherited an entrepreneurial streak from his parents, who at times in his youth owned a grain elevator, a ballroom, a fish market, a real estate business, and ran an 80-acre farm.
After high school, Cook earned an associate’s degree from DeVry Technical Institute in Chicago, then worked with his brother in a TV and radio tower business. He enrolled at what was then Lawrence Institute of Technology in 1960, and after graduation worked at the Wayne State University medical school, helping install a microwave linear particle accelerator and meeting a future business partner, with whom Cook started a company in the then-new field of programmable logic controllers for factory automation.
Ken and Elaine Cook at the dedication ceremony for the Cook Engineering Technology Laboratory at LTU.
From there, he went to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he spent the late 1960s and ‘70s working on the electronics of medical devices like defibrillators, becoming a certified clinical engineer. And from there, he moved on to jobs in electronics at a machine tool company and a highway sign company, where he helped set up electronics plants all over the world.
Throughout his engineering career, Cook taught evening classes at LTU. And after an employer got bought out, LTU offered him a full-time teaching job, which led to his becoming chair of the Department of Engineering Technology in 2006.
With fellow faculty members, Cook beefed up the course offerings of LTU’s engineering technology program, upgrading it from an associate’s degree to a bachelor’s degree, and helping the program earn accreditation.
Professor Cook’s laboratory was indeed where LTU students made magic.
Another Cook innovation: A senior capstone project class in which students research, design, assess markets, and manufacture prototypes of innovative products, which helped several students earn patents and sell their inventions commercially. That program, Cook said, has designed over 500 commercial products.
But perhaps Cook’s most famous innovation was introducing magic into LTU classrooms. Cook said he became fascinated by magic as a boy, when his father took him to a circus and he saw a magician’s show. His father later took him to a magic conference, where he met an associate of the legendary Harry Blackstone. “My dad bought a lot of magic equipment for me, and I started practicing and practicing,” Cook recalled for an article in an LTU magazine. “Dad built me a magic room in the basement with mirrors on the walls, and by the time I was 13 or 14, I could do a two-hour show.>
Professor Cook dressed for one of his magic performances.
Cook performed magic in more than 60 countries and 49 of the 50 states, making people float, escaping coffins, and making animals appear and disappear. He also treated his senior project students every spring to a free magic show, doing tricks like making cut ropes whole again and making cards leap, apparently of their own volition, from his hands to the pockets of people in his audience. Cook was a fan of LTU’s year-old marketing campaign, “Be Curious. Make Magic,” volunteering to do magic tricks for LTU social media videos—one of which racked up more than a quarter of a million views on several social media platforms.
Cook was a longtime registered professional engineer, a certified clinical engineer, and holder of some 25 patents.
There will be visitation for Cook at A.J. Desmond & Sons Funeral Home, 2800 Crooks Road in Troy, from 3 to 8 p.m. Saturday, April 6. Funderal services for Cook will be held on Thursday, April 11 at Christ Our Light Catholic Church, 3077 Glouchester Drive in Troy. There will be visitation at 10 a.m. and the Mass at 10:30. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Lawrence Tech and-or the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center.
Lawrence Technological University is one of only 13 private, technological, comprehensive doctoral universities in the United States. Located in Southfield, Mich., LTU was founded in 1932 and offers more than 100 programs through its Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Business and Information Technology, Engineering, and Health Sciences, as well as Specs@LTU as part of its growing Center for Professional Development. PayScale lists Lawrence Tech among the nation’s top 11 percent of universities for alumni salaries. Forbes and The Wall Street Journal rank LTU among the nation’s top 10 percent. U.S. News and World Report list it in the top tier of the best Midwest colleges. Students benefit from small class sizes and a real-world, hands-on, “theory and practice” education with an emphasis on leadership. Activities on Lawrence Tech’s 107-acre campus include more than 60 student organizations and NAIA varsity sports.
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