Search

Contact

Donate

2022-2023 Clean Energy Fellows: Clean Transportation Cohort

This cohort of educator leaders from across the Pacific Northwest was tasked with building innovative and equitable tools for engaging students in the rapidly innovating clean transportation sector. These leaders worked collaboratively to define and develop best practices and tools for clean transportation education to broaden public understanding of the critical role that these technologies are playing in communities and what the future of this industry will look like.

Photo Gallery

Students stand around a small truck with a solar panel on the top of the back cargo compartment.
2 boys stand in the sun giving a thumbs up. On a bench in front of them is a small solar car model with a solar module and 2 AA batteries.
2 students drive a small truck with the words "TAYLOR TRUCK" on the front the cargo area has a wooden framework over it.
An electrical box with lots of wiring, several strips of lights and a battery hanging out the front. The box has a blue osculating light on top.
Students sit in a small truck with a wooden frame over the cargo area. It is parked on a green field.
Students stand around a chalk track that has 5 roughly straight lanes and car models racing down them propelled by rear propellers.
A man stands before an open garage door. On the work bench table is a concave platform lined in foil. Students sit at the work table and a similar table farther back in the room.
A wheel connected to an aluminum tube frame with a small electric motor mounted to a gear on the wheel.
A car battery connected to an inverter. The inverter reads 14.40 V 0.000 A 000.0 W

Additional Info

Links

2022-2022 Clean Energy Fellows: Clean Transportation Showcase

Collaborative Partners

Go Baby Go
Oregon ACTE
Orcas Power & Light Cooperative
Consumers Power Incorporated
Emerald Public Utility District
Horizon Educational

Funding Partners

Bonneville Power Administration

Resources from this cohort

A handmade electric motor clamped to a table. The motor is a dowel has two horizontal wings that are wrapped in copper wire that are resting parallel wooden base. Nailed into the wood on each side is a nail wrapped in copper wire. A string is connected to the dowel with a weight to make the dowel spin. A yardstick leans next to the table the measure is unreadable, but most of the stick.

Creating an Electric Motor
creating an electric motor

GRADE(S): 10TH, 11TH, 12TH, 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, 6TH, 7TH, 8TH, 9TH,

Students will discover some properties of electromagnets. They will create their own electric motor and measuring its torque by picking up a weight …

A hydrogen fuel cell made using a mason jar. The lid switch next to a vent and a positive and negative electrical pole with a red and black wingnut respectively. Inside the jar a coil of thick metal wire can be seen.

Creating an Hydrogen Generator
creating an hydrogen generator

GRADE(S): 10TH, 11TH, 12TH, 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, 6TH, 7TH, 8TH, 9TH,

Students will discover some properties of Hydrogen. They will work to create their own hydrogen generator and experiment by measuring its gas …

A model car that uses hydrogen electrolysis. On the base there is a small motor, 2 small clear plastic beakers with measurement lines with tubes connecting to the top and bottom of the hydrolysis chamber. A syringe adds fluid to the chamber.

Hydrogen Cars
hydrogen cars

GRADE(S): 10TH, 11TH, 12TH, 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, 6TH, 7TH, 8TH, 9TH,

Students will discover some properties of Hydrogen and how a PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) operates. They will work to create their own hydrogen kit …

Photo of bicycle handlebars. On the left side of the handlebar is mounted stopwatch device. Just right of the middle of the bars is a screen which reads 40.4 V 0.00kph on the top line and 2 W 0.061Ah on the bottom line.

The Cycle Analyst
the cycle analyst

GRADE(S): 10TH, 11TH, 12TH, 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, 6TH, 7TH, 8TH, 9TH,

Students will use a Cycle Analyst to collect data from an electric go-kart and measure the efficiency of the system. The Cycle Analyst can be used on …

Meet the Clean Energy Fellows

Line drawing of a person in front of a board with lines on it in dark blue.
Jim Mulanax

Monroe High School, Monroe OR

An industrial Technology educator since 1997, he hails from Humboldt State University and obtained his first teaching post at the Mapleton School District (7-12). While there, he started an electric go-kart program that began its roots as a hands-on project in applied physics. Up and rolling, the students work together as a team to design and build their vision of an efficient electric vehicle. They test, collect data and modify the project to perfect their design, and during the rally season, they compete in seven one-hour long rallies with other schools. Currently, Mr. Mulanax works at Monroe High School (9-12) teaching the same project with a growing addition that includes alternative energy and transportation in its various applications.

Brett McFarland Headshot
Brett McFarland

Orcas Island High School, Orcas Island WA

Brett married his college sweetheart in Alaska and immediately began working on remote land surveying on Federal Native Lands Selection for the government. Once the job was completed, they moved from their home in Alaska to Orcas Island in Washington for a winter job and ended up settling there since. Brett has a background in Math and Physics, but has worked as a carpenter, surveyor, sawmill laborer, solar tech, and entrepreneur, starting WildLife Cycles, the local bike shop. His journey led him to buy raw land, built an off grid house, and have a daughter. When his daughter began school, he volunteered at her school, which eventually led to a science teaching position at a K-8 off grid school on Waldron Island, before building another off grid house and eventually to teaching Physics at Orcas High.
In 2010, Brett received a Toyota Tapestry Grant for the Umiak Energy Project, where his students built a 25 foot Umiak and a bicycle-powered boat trailer and learned about battery and PV technology by assembling three different battery packs – Lead Acid, NiMH, and LiFePO4 – and incorporating PV for charging the batteries. His students ran trials and gathered data in the local Salish Sea and learned how to track energy, power, battery conditions, as well as compare distances covered and speeds traveled with the different battery packs. After this, Brett began coordinating with the 5th grade teachers on monthly visits to work with his students to increase science interest in elementary school.
Brett has I have lived nearly 20 years off the grid using PV and wind energy with no fossil fuel backup and brings his experience and passion learning to his classroom, focusing on clean transportation on and between the islands, including on engaging physics curriculum that explores efficiency and design of off grid cars, carts, ferries, boats, and conversions.

Lallie McKenzie Headshot
Lallie McKenzie

South Eugene High School, Eugene OR

Lallie began her career working in autism-specific residential facilities before becoming a behavior specialist at a special education school in Chicago. She transitioned to a classroom teacher at Chicago Public Schools before deciding to go back to school to get certified in chemistry and ended up staying for ten years to get PhD in chemistry. The experience of being a woman working in the field making nanomaterials as a postdoc in a lab for Sony was eye-opening. She chose to focus her career path back on education and started teaching math at her kids’ school. As a teacher, Lallie developed a curriculum for a green chemistry course and became a mentor for the South Eugene Robotics team. She also received her commercial drone license and established a STEM program focused on drone learning. She developed the curriculum for and taught an engineering technology CTE program. She is currently piloting an empathetic engineering program for her school district, based on her experience mentoring robotics teams to build and program mobility tools for babies and toddlers with disabilities to eliminate barriers children face as they begin to enter critical social environments through the Go Baby Go program.