Each morning on his way to middle school, a young Kenneth Lewis would pass Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood, Arkansas. His eyes were drawn to the bustling automotive lab, its open garage doors offering a glimpse of students learning the trade he dreamed of mastering.
But when Lewis became a freshman at the school, the automotive lab was gone. Closed,
stripped of its tools, and converted into ordinary classrooms.
His childhood dreams weren’t dashed. They were merely delayed.
Today, Lewis is Washtenaw Community College’s newest full-time faculty member in the Transportation Technologies program. Ironically, it was an unplanned visit to WCC nearly two decades ago that set him on this path — a journey that began in the wake of a natural disaster.
In 2005, while studying mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University, Hurricane Katrina hit the South, flooding his garden-level apartment and leaving him with only a garbage bag of belongings. Struggling with both the hurricane’s aftermath and a lack of passion for his studies, Lewis thought it was time for a change. After spending an entire internship with the Army Corps of Engineers at a desk, he made a move.
“I didn’t want to wear a suit and tie or sit at a desk every day,” Lewis recalls. “I promised myself that if I wasn’t happy, I’d walk away.”
And walk away he did. In December 2006, Lewis moved to southeast Michigan to live with his father. With registration closed at local universities, he turned to WCC, meeting with an advisor who asked about his interests. Lewis flashed back to those middle school mornings and his interest in working on vehicles.
That moment sparked a perfect match. At WCC, he earned an associate degree in Automotive Technology and began a career as an assistant manager at an automotive center, later working at a local dealership.
Teaching was a natural evolution for Lewis, who is also a fourth-degree black belt and master instructor in the martial art Tang Soo Do. Today, he operates PKSA Karate in Ann Arbor with his wife, Whitney.
“I love to teach martial arts, which led me to wonder if I could teach auto shop,” Lewis recalls. “After my high school took that opportunity away from me, are there places I could provide that opportunity for others?”
That desire led to a role as an automotive tech at Canton High School, pursuit of CTE teaching certification and, later, as an automotive teacher at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School.
Now, he’s back where it began.
“It was a goal of mine to try to get back to WCC, but not one I really had to struggle to make happen,” Lewis says. “One of the things I’ve learned from martial arts is sometimes you can just put your goals out into the world and they accomplish themselves, if you will.”
Tags: Automotive Services, December 2024, Faculty Profile, On The Record, Transportation Technologies