Stevenson MADE teacher named Educator of the Year

SHELBY TOWNSHIP — Mark LaCombe, a Stevenson High School Manufacturing, Automation and Design Engineering teacher, was named Educator of the Year by the Michigan Design Council and was recognized at the Michigan Design Prize 2023 Awards Ceremony on June 7.

His ninth grade students have been competing in the Michigan Design Council’s Michigan Design Prize competition for five years.

“We have competed, and done very well, in the Michigan Design Prize challenge for the past four years; it fits so well with what we believe in for our MADE students — finding and solving real world, relevant problems for an authentic audience,” LaCombe said via email.

He said his favorite part about teaching is seeing students accomplish things that they didn’t think they could.

“I also really enjoy when students find their passions and work on projects that are meaningful for them and they take pride in,” he said.

“For our students being in 9th grade, the things that he is able to get them to do is far beyond their years,” Stevenson High School Associate Principal Alison Hildebrand stated in a press release.

Joshua Lee, Stevenson High School MADE Class of 2023, said LaCombe really has innovated and helped the MADE program to grow.

“Overall, he is a great teacher who really, genuinely cares about each of his students and wants them to feel like they are an equal. Mr. LaCombe has done so many things for our Academy,” Lee said in an email.

He said LaCombe guides the way that the program runs.

“Honestly, I don’t think I would be as far as I am in life and in school without him as my 9th grade teacher,” Lee said in a press release.

The Michigan Design Council works to make Michigan a place that industrial design professionals and businesses choose as their home. The 2023 Michigan Design Prize challenge asked students to design a product that promotes Michigan’s waterways with a focus on the needs of school-age children and teenagers.

For LaCombe, the Educator of the Year recognition applies to the whole Stevenson MADE program and its staff.

Stevenson MADE had two Michigan Design Prize finalists who were recognized at the event: Meghan Landino, who worked on her project independently, and Gjon Lulgjuraj and Sierra Savage.