Dr. Ron May, President of Ancilla College, will be the featured speaker during the event scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. CT. Scholarships will be awarded to the students as well as special awards for attendance, performance skills and highest test score average.
A Ladies Car Care Clinic begins tonight at the SCILL Center in Knox.
“Rod Dawson and Mark Anderson had initiated that a number of years ago and we’re expanding it just a tad bit this year,” said SCILL Center Director Jerry Gurrado. “We’re going to be holding it evenings on October 25th and then a follow-up on November 8th, both from 6:00-8:00 p.m. There’s only a $5.00 donation for that.”
Students from the SCILL Center recently graduated and one of the students in the class of 2011 is Darren Harrell of Plymouth, who not only graduated with honors from the Automotive Certification Program, but did well in national competition.
“I’ve been trying for some scholarships from Lincoln Tech which is the college I’ll be attending,” said Harrell. “They had an acceptance test there where 1,200 kids took it and I was in the top 20. I got an $8,000 scholarship for that. If it wasn’t for the SCILL Center, I probably wouldn’t have done as well on the test.”
Graduation for the SCILL Center students is this week.
“Our graduation this year is going to be on May 18th, at 6:00 p.m. Knox time,” said Instructor Mark Anderson. “We’ve got 26 students that are going to be graduating this year. All of our students managed to get at least one ASE certification.”
The students at the SCILL Center recently took ASE classes for certification.
“There were 152 tests that were given over a week’s period of time, which included steering, suspension, brakes, electrical and electronic systems, engine performance, engine repair, automatic transmission systems, transaxles, manual drive line, axles and heating and air conditioning,” explained SCILL Center Instructor, Rod Dawson. “In each of the categories, we had actually 19 students that were taking each one of these tests, and they scored over a fifty percent in each of them with a pass rate. I was quite impressed with the students and it was an excellent showing for the first time around. I felt that the students needed to take all eight areas and it just validates what they actually are doing here for training.”
Looking for ways to save at the pump? Rod Dawson, instructor at the SCILL Center in Knox, says that a clean air filter can increase your gas mileage.
“This is the time of year when we’re starting to get a lot of bugs, farmers are out in the fields and we’re going to be picking up a lot of dust and dirt and those filters will start to clog up. We start restricting the amount of air that needs to be put into that engine through that air filter,” said Dawson. “When that starts to clog up, it richens the engine up because we’re not getting the air to mix in with it. We start using a little more fuel at that point in time. We’re robbing about ten percent of the air that needs to come into it which can cost us up to about fifteen percent on fuel consumption.”
SCILL Center Instructor, Rod Dawson, is in this week to give us car care tips for National Car Care month. He says we can’t neglect spark plugs
“People don’t realize it, but that spark plug will fire 3 million times within a thousand miles of driving,” said Dawson. “Take a look at what that spark plug actually does. There’s a lot of heat, a lot of electrical, and chemical erosion that happens on that spark plug. It does wear down and it does need to be replaced.”
SCILL Center Instructor, Rod Dawson, has another gas mileage saving car care tip for National Car Care month. Today, he talks tire maintenance.
“Make sure we keep them to the proper OEM specifications on tire air,” said Dawson. “Make sure you rotate them and look the tires over periodically. If you’re running two to three pounds on an under inflated tire, it’s like driving around with your parking brake on. You’re going to lose one to two miles per gallon.”
April is National Car Care month. Rod Dawson, Instructor at the SCILL Center in Knox, is in this week to offer gas mileage saving car care tips with us.
“Three out of ten vehicles have either missing or failed gas caps and nearly 150 million gallons of gas vaporizes because of it,” said Dawson. “A $5.00-$10.00 gas cap is an easy fix for that.”
Mr. Dawson will have more tips for us throughout the week on how we can keep our cars running efficiently and how we can save money at the pump.
The instructors and students at the SCILL Center in Knox recently held a coat drive for those in need this winter season. The coats were delivered Thursday to the Community Services of Starke County building where they will be distributed.
