Marion wanted to see the water again.
On the covered deck outside Heather McColley’s classroom at Oceano Elementary School, the 7-year-old student sat beside the new redwood garden box, learning how its buttons sent water through clear tubing along the front of the planter.
Each time the water moved, Marion, who has cerebral palsy, smiled widely and repeated one word in Spanish: “más.”
Nearby, Cal Poly mechanical engineering seniors watched a yearlong design challenge settle into the rhythm of a school day. The box was one of two senior projects students brought to McColley’s medically fragile classroom, the only one of its kind in Lucia Mar Unified School District.
Inside, 18-year-old Evan, who also has cerebral palsy, lay beneath the other project: a sensory den with an overhead frame, moving lights and enough clearance for a hospital bed.
As the lights shifted above him, his eyes lifted toward the display. His response confirmed months of measuring bed height and adjusting the frame.
McColley’s 22 years of teaching had given her a clear sense of what her students needed from the Cal Poly teams. She wanted equipment that could help them learn cause and effect in ways that matched their bodies and daily routines.
The teams returned with a garden box and sensory den built to last in a classroom where small details could determine how fully a student could take part.
“They met a community need that we couldn’t meet on our own,” McColley said. “We wouldn’t have even known where to start, but they had the right background.”
McColley’s class can serve students from ages 3 to 22, so the teams could not design around one set of measurements.
That became clearer each time the senior project teams visited Oceano Elementary. Gabe Haarberg, Lucas Meneghetti, Matthew Podgorski and Alex Seybold returned to the classroom more than four times, studying how close students could get to the planter, how much clearance different wheelchairs needed and whether the garden box could move easily in and out of the classroom.
“We didn’t want the teacher to have to adjust the wheelchair a lot,” Podgorski said.
The sensory den team began with an existing setup McColley’s students already loved: a sensory box that sat on a table and worked best for smaller children. Mechanical engineering students Hannah Henderson, Marcus Kanenaga and Galilea Portillo studied the original design before building a larger version that could fit around students in wheelchairs or hospital beds.
The new den surrounded students with moving lights, music and textured panels. The lights also gave McColley and her staff another way to observe students with cerebral palsy and visual impairment as they responded to the shifting display. Because many students communicate without speech, those responses could help staff see what drew their attention and how quickly they processed changing cues.
The classroom visits also changed how the Cal Poly students understood the work. In McColley’s classroom, the same piece of equipment had to support different kinds of access from one activity to the next.
Henderson said the sensory den project made her think more deeply about the range of abilities an engineer must consider.
“Accessibility affects people in so many different ways,” she said. “It was a good experience in understanding how to design for different types of users.”
Back at Cal Poly, the garden box team had to account for a student’s view as much as the planter’s weight.
The team angled the planter so students could see into it from a seated position, then had to make sure it could hold wet soil without becoming difficult to move. Students would also press against the planter as they used the buttons.
“Weight was a big consideration,” Seybold said. “We didn’t want it to tip over.”
The team responded with a steel frame and heavy caster wheels, then built the planter from redwood and coated it with a waterproof sealant. Haarberg said the redwood would extend the box’s life, while the frame helped the team feel confident that the planter could handle regular use.
The irrigation system brought a separate challenge. Most drip systems are made for larger gardens, Meneghetti said, so the team had to adjust the water pressure for a much smaller planter. The buttons set off different sprinkler patterns, and the visible tubing became part of the lesson, allowing students to follow the water before it reached the soil.
Meneghetti said the project also gave students another way to experience something he has always loved.
“It’s a way to bring nature to them,” he said.
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The sensory den required the team to turn a classroom concept into something sturdy enough to serve students for years.
Kanenaga, who had spent time in Cal Poly’s shops as a digital fabrication supervisor, helped guide much of the build. Portillo came into the project with less woodworking experience and left with a clearer sense of how much small design decisions can matter. Henderson said the team also thought about longevity, knowing younger students could experience the den years from now.
That long-term impact stayed with Henderson.
“I liked that this project will have a tangible impact and that it will be used every day,” she said.
Delivery day showed both teams what their measurements and shop work meant to McColley’s students.
Seeing Evan beneath the sensory den gave Henderson her first glimpse of the project doing what it was built to do. The garden box still awaited soil and plants, but the students could already picture it as part of McColley’s class. Several said they wanted to come back once the planter was filled.
Seybold said the project stood out because the team started from scratch and built something that would stay at Oceano Elementary.
“This was the best project I’ve done,” he said. “I can’t wait to see what plants they grow.”
McColley said she would welcome another senior project partnership. The Cal Poly teams had taken two ideas she could not have built on her own and turned them into equipment made for the students’ daily lessons.
“They took an idea and made it better,” McColley said.
By Emily Slater
Project support: The TECHE Lab provided initial funding for both senior projects. A Baker-Koob grant allowed the garden box team to upgrade key materials, including the casters and wood.
