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Educational tool

Career Center going diesel — BIG-TIME — thanks to Cummins

Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Warren County Career Center auto technology students (from left) Tamryn Drescher, Kenneth Mack, and Austin Spear work on a diesel engine donated to the class by Cummins, Inc.

Thanks to a donation from Cummins, students at Warren County Career Center are growing more familiar with current diesel engines.

The 600-horsepower Cummins, Inc. diesel engine donated to the auto tech shop has undergone some modifications that make it not street legal.

“They chose to make it a learning tool,” Career Center Principal Jim Evers said. Sections of the engine have been cut away and certain areas of it have been color-coded.

It’s one thing to know what’s going on inside. With this tool, “students can observe what is inside the new diesel engines,” Teacher Greg Wisenauer said.

The class did not have a cut-away diesel engine to study and diesels are undergoing changes. Studying an older model is not as helpful as having a new one on hand.

“We are in the same crisis that we went through with gasoline engines,” Wisenauer said.

Diesel emissions standards changed in 2004. Students looking for the important information about diesel engines need to have something more current to study.

The Cummins engine is a 2006.

“It’s very helpful,” student Kenneth Mack said. “It shows us how everything works and lets us see what everything looks like inside.”

“All of us appreciate Cummins donating this engine,” student Tamryn Drescher said.

She said the new engine provides a valuable variation from the much smaller cut-away gasoline engine in the shop.

The career center was not the only possible destination for the engine. Both Wisenauer and Evers said they appreciate the company’s consideration and especially being chosen to receive the gift.

The engine is outdated as something that might be placed in a semi and used over the road. The estimated value of that engine is between $50,000 and $100,000.

Now its value is as an educational tool.

“We do a lot in the U.S. but also across the world to support education, specifically vocational and STEM education, to ensure that people have the skills necessary for the jobs of tomorrow in the technical fields which are constantly becoming more high tech and complex,” Cummins Director of External Communications Jon Mills said.

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