In a classroom at South Eugene High School, where robotics hum and youthful curiosity buzzes, Lallie McKenzie is doing more than teaching—she’s shaping futures. Along with her education ecosystem, she is creating space for high schoolers to have a real, tangible impression on a child’s life through their coursework, harnessing the power of community-centered design and clean transportation technologies to empower the next generation of solutions-builders. As a Career and Technical Education (CTE) educator and Clean Energy Fellowship alumna, Lallie leads her students on a journey where engineering meets empathy, and lessons extend far beyond the classroom.

Lallie’s passion lies in “humanitarian engineering,” merging technical skills with social responsibility. For her, it’s not just about building; it’s about inspiring students to make a tangible difference. “The internal motivation to make change,” she says, “drives transformational learning.” This belief fuels her work, including her ongoing collaboration with Go Baby Go, a cornerstone of her teaching.

Go Baby Go Oregon is more than a project—sometimes it’s a social lifeline for children aged 6 months to 3 years old facing mobility challenges. Since 2018, Lallie’s robotics team has designed and built custom vehicles for these young clients, engaging with their families and consulting physicians and learning about the critical effect this can have on a young child’s early socialization. This powerful work leaves a lasting impact on her students.

After school hours, as students worked to finish a vehicle, one said, “We have to finish this because a 3-year-old’s life is going to change, and they don’t know that yet.” Moments like this deepen their commitment and spark new career interests. The hands-on experience, coupled with the knowledge that their work helps real people, has drawn more students into STEM, including those who might not have seen themselves in these fields.

After school hours, as students worked to finish a vehicle, one said, “We have to finish this because a 3-year-old’s life is going to change, and they don’t know that yet.” Moments like this deepen their commitment and spark new career interests. The hands-on experience, coupled with the knowledge that their work helps real people, has drawn more students into STEM, including those who might not have seen themselves in these fields.

After implementing the electric mobility curriculum, Lallie’s summer engineering program saw female-identifying campers rise from 38% to 52%, with new affinity groups for female and gender non-conforming students.

Lallie’s influence extends beyond her students. Her curriculum, which integrates electric mobility and transportation decarbonization lessons, is featured in CE’s Clean Transportation Implementation Toolkit. This mini library includes a suite of resources vetted by educator leaders, either selected from existing curriculum by CE partners or developed by the Clean Energy Fellows themselves. This past April, Lallie presented her work at the OR ACTE conference, inspiring educators statewide. By June, their students had produced five more vehicles, expanding the reach of these life-changing tools.

For Lallie, her students’ productive struggle and sometimes unconventional approaches to obstacles symbolize learning, growth, and the undeniable proof that her students’ work is changing lives. Selected to pilot a “Humanitarian Engineering” course, Lallie will lead 34 students through community-centered design projects in the 2024-2025 school year to harness this individual genius for local challenges in their backyards. Reflecting on her students’ challenges with Go Baby Go project design, she says, “It doesn’t matter what the wires look like; there are fingerprints from the kids.” 

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