Michael A. Cooper is a retired physician assistant, educator, and military medical officer with more than three decades of experience in clinical practice, academic leadership, and military medicine. A 1991 graduate of the University of Kentucky Physician Assistant Program, he later earned a Master of Physician Assistant Studies from the University of Nebraska and completed a postgraduate fellowship in hepatology sponsored by the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease.
Mr. Cooper served as an Assistant Professor and Site Director of the University of Kentucky Physician Assistant Program’s Morehead Campus from 2010 to 2014. In that role, he directed the Morehead program; managed its faculty, staff, and resources; and helped sustain the partnership among the University of Kentucky, Morehead State University, and Saint Claire Regional Medical Center that supported the program’s rural health initiatives.
His clinical career at the University of Kentucky Medical Center included extensive experience in general internal medicine, cardiology, hepatology, and the medical care of patients awaiting liver transplantation.
Mr. Cooper also completed a 30-year military career, retiring in 2022 as a Colonel in the United States Air Force. His assignments included serving as the Individual Mobilization Augmentee for the Chief Physician Assistant Consultant to the Air Force Surgeon General and as the senior career field leader for physician assistants in the Air Force Reserve. He deployed to Iraq in 2004, where he practiced emergency and trauma care at the 332nd Air Force Theater Hospital. From 2014 to 2022, he served as Commander of the 123rd Medical Group, Kentucky Air National Guard. In that role, he was the senior medical officer for the 123rd Airlift Wing, directing medical support for approximately 1,200 personnel and managing the resources needed for the Wing to provide combat support to the United States Air Force.
Mr. Cooper received the Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society award from the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences as the outstanding graduate in 1991. He was inducted into Pi Alpha National Honor Society for Physician Assistants in 2013.