About us

In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Lawrence Tech’s founding president Russell E. Lawrence envisioned a new model of higher education that could serve both traditional students as well as working adults, and combined a teaching philosophy espousing both theory and practice.

Lawrence believed engineering and technological achievements would be what would spur economic recovery, both for the region and the nation. Henry and Edsel Ford agreed to lease their former Henry Ford Trade School building, a part of their Model-T assembly complex in Highland Park, to the new university, which began operations with a few hundred students. The intuition's enrollment dropped during World War II but surged immediately thereafter as veterans enjoyed the education benefits of the G.I. Bill.

In 1955, Lawrence Institute of Technology (LIT) moved to a campus in then rural Southfield.Since the University was founded as an engineering school, it is fitting that the first building constructed on the Southfield campus was the Engineering building. The campus master plan was created by professor Earl W. Pellerin, who also led the teams that designed the Architecture and Science Buildings, the University’s first residence hall on Ten Mile Road, University Housing-South, and what was originally the president’s residence on nearby Circle Drive