In the middle of the Diesel and Heavy Duty Equipment Repair shop at Cheney Technical High School in Manchester, Connecticut sits a school bus. The Diesel Repair students work on several buses during the school year, but this is not your average school bus. The bus is part of a special project developed by a group of engineering students at the University of Connecticut. The students are planning to convert the bus so it can run not only on diesel fuel but also cooking oil. They will then take it on a cross country trip to promote the use of more sustainable "green" technologies.

Joseph Hollay, the Department Head of the Diesel and Heavy Duty Equipment Repair program at Cheney Tech, said that the project has been a joint effort of lot of the shops at the school. "When they came to us with their project, we got our drafting program to design and render several of the parts, the HVAC students and staff made some of the heat exchange tubing, and the Welding shop helped build the fuel tanks and filters," said Hollay. The 12th, 11th and 10th grade Diesel students have all been working on the bus preparing it for its inaugural run in May. Hollay plans to meet the UConn students in California when they complete their "green" journey across the United States.

For more information about the project, go to:Juanway.org