The collaboration between two High School teachers in Ohio lead to an Amazing BioDiesel Project.

In this episode, Lindsey talks with a high school biodiesel program in Ohio, led by Principal Eric Lawson, Chemistry Instructor Ms. Harpen, Diesel Tech Instructor Mr. Bronson, and two former students, Jacob and Rianna. This program teaches biodiesel production, focusing on converting used oil, such as fryer oil from a local biker bar, into biofuel. This hands-on approach engages high school students in chemistry and diesel mechanics, with successful projects that have earned national recognition in FFA competitions. These accomplishments demonstrate the viability of biodiesel as a more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional diesel.

The collaboration extends beyond the classroom, with efforts to share knowledge through mobile labs and inspire sustainable practices, particularly in soybean farming communities. The program emphasizes the development of skills for careers in engineering and sustainability. Challenges are embraced as valuable learning experiences, with innovative approaches like misting nozzles and enhanced safety measures improving production methods. Success stories showcased at events such as truck shows have sparked growing interest in sustainable fuel solutions, offering cheaper and greener alternatives. The program’s vision fosters long-term sustainability by inspiring students to embrace environmentally conscious practices, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable future.

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Transcript

Before we hit the road on today's discussion, I want to express our sincere gratitude to our sponsors. Without their support, this podcast wouldn't be possible. So, a big shout out to our investors. Advanced Training Systems, Averitt,  Forward Air, Walmart, XPO Logistics, and the National Transportation Institute. Thank you for your commitment in advancing the trucking community. So buckle up and get ready for an insightful journey into all things next gen, tracking your road to the future. 

Hey, thank you for being on Next Gen talks. I am really excited. Today we are celebrating biodiesel fuel day. And to celebrate, we have a very interesting program in Ohio that is going on. So this is a part of the Great Oaks School District and Laurel Oaks schools in Wilmington, Ohio. They have a biodiesel program to teach technicians.  And then at Blanchester High School in Blanchester, Ohio, the chemistry class is what's creating the biodiesel. So we're going to do some rounds of introduction, and then we're going to talk about the program and what they're doing.  So, Ms. Harpin, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah. I've been teaching for 21 years. I came from industry. I worked ten years at Procter and Gamble in the shortening and oils. And when I came here, one of my goals was to be able to include what's happening industry and around the world in my chemistry instruction. And I was very fortunate to be part of a $5 million, multi state Department of Energy grant that taught us how to incorporate biofuels into our instruction. And I went around Ohio and I was instructing other teachers, and I had introduced it in my class, and were making biodiesel for a number of years. And then at the same time, Mr. Bronson got involved, won this fantastic grant that made the opportunity for being able to actually go a step further and have a small pilot plant in my classroom through the work that his mechanics did. So, this is our third year working on this. We've been doing it a step at a time. And my chemistry students, my college chemistry, and my advanced chemistry students are able to incorporate it in their work. And they've written some great research projects on it. And we'll have Jacob and Rihanna maybe talk about that in a little bit. But that's pretty much how it started with me. I was doing it at a lab bench scale, and then Mr. Bronson took it up quite a few notches. I do believe we're the only ones in the country doing anything like this.

Well, hopefully you're the first, but you won't be the last. So, Mr. Bronson would you like to introduce yourself?

Sure. I'm in my twelveth year of teaching diesel mechanics here at Laurel Oaks in Wilmington. It's a rural school. Our other three campuses are in the Cincinnati area, so they're more of city atmosphere, where I get a lot more country boys and girls in my classes and rural communities. As far as I got a grant from Harbor Freight Tools for Schools of 100,000 back in 2018. And that's where we started to come up with wild ideas. And one of my things that my students wanted to do was build a diesel jeep. And then we started talking about fuel, and hey, we could run this on biodiesel. And I heard about Mrs. Harpin through a welding. Then, you know, gave her a call and she was floored that I was reaching out and wanting to start doing some things. And my students went to her class, made what, half gallon batches maybe or something. We came over a few years ago, and then we expanded from there and went to 40 gallon processor. Epic failure. It was a learning experience. It's just created so many opportunities. We learn in our failures. For sure, we're getting it dialed in that students had to research what it took to control the temperature, the wash process. We've tried different nozzles and shower heads, and I think we've got that down now in the drying process. And it's actually grown other people to get interested. Also, I've had kids from other programs come over, and one young man's family was growing bamboo in Ohio. I never would have guessed a million years anybody's growing bamboo. But he wanted to make some fuel out of bamboo.

So he got with our chemistry teacher here and did some experiments, and they got it to burn. We didn't run in an engine or anything, but just it generated their interest. And Brian Utter is now on board at my school, and he's making biodiesel with his class, small batch. We got all the beakers and the equipment needed to do it in small batch. Now they're going to do a large batch, eight gallon, large batch. We made a couple more processors because 40 gallon was just crazy insane when we messed that batch up. It's just provided so many opportunities. We've bought generators. I've had my students put dual fuel systems on the generators. Another Harbor Freight Tools for Schools. Winter that I met through the program, he's up in upper Valley career center. He's building load banks for our generators to run on. And then we can do fuel comparisons and put the generators under load compare pump fuel versus the fuel that Rianna made or the fuel that Jacob made and sees who responds the best. So that's created those opportunities there should be having our load banks at the truck show. So they'll be at the truck show. Maybe we can talk to some of them and add some to your podcast or something on your website.

Absolutely. He's talking about the Mid American Truck Show. 

So, yeah, we did apply this year for an additional grant, and we both applied together for 10,000, and they said, we can't split this in two. Why don't you both apply for ten grand? So I bumped mine up to $9,960, and he bumped his up to closer to ten grand. And he's building multiple load banks. He's got one of our generators that they're using for our tests right now, hopefully on earth day in April. Did they reach out to you, Andrea?

I haven't. Not yet.

Okay. Well, I included you on email, so they're wanting to do something for Earth Day, which I believe is in April, and maybe get you to come to our campus and have the generators and everything running. So just about everything in our class. And then the big jeep we built will run on it. And they, like, the sticker on the back, says, cleaner than your Prius when it runs. Kids get a kick out of that.

That's awesome.

And then it's kind of a selling point, too. I jokingly say, asking kids, what do you think it smells like when it runs? Well, it smells like french fries and makes a fat guy like me hungry.

Awesome. Well, Mr. Lawson, we'd love to hear from you. Introduce yourself and how you've gotten involved in this program.

Well, I'm Eric Lawson. This is my first year out at Blanchester High School as the principal. As a know, I started out here in the country, and I moved back to the city for the past few years. So now I'm back out into the country again and just getting to be involved and talk with Mrs. Harpen a lot on the amount of exposure that the kids are getting publicly, and then the amount of exposure to just the different lessons that they're learning as it connects to chemistry, even mechanics, and everything associated with it. So right now, I am really just the Rah Ra cheerleader as it comes to it. I let these two experts kind of handle everything from that end, and really, I'm just there to support whatever comes their way and kind of reap the rewards and benefits. As I get to broadcast, look at all the wonderful things my staff is doing, even though I really have no hands on contact with the program. Other than I get to go and advertise for it and get their board approval for all of their wonderful truck shows and different things that they want to know. I'd love to be more involved as we keep going, but obviously, being my first year, I'm kind of just like, wait for Ms. Harpen to tell me, hey, what do you think about doing. This, this and this? And I just give her the keys and tell her to go, for the most part, and anything we can do to keep building her college chem program that's really benefiting from this. And I know just the overall joy that we're getting out of it and getting those kids real life experience that they're going to be able to take for year after year, whether they choose to go to college, whether they choose to go start working, whatever it is. And it's one of those experiences that you can't plan for as a building administrator without these wonderful people that we have here.

Okay, so here we go. Ms. Harpen, what is biofuel?

Biofuel is any fuel that is made from a biological source. It could be from any kind of oil, corn oil, soy oil, oil from algae. Biofuel can also be made from waste, as in anaerobic digesters. So there's a fantastic anaerobic digester at Ohio State, and I believe there's four other in the state of Ohio. It's kind of an up and growing thing where you take a know, we're aware of the fact that there's methane that comes out of a big pile of garbage at a dump like rumpkies, but that's really inefficient. Most of it we just blow off, some of it we tank. But it's much more efficient if companies that have food waste, like Kroger's or Nestle's, can bring that to a digester, and in an environment that's devoid of oxygen, it could be turned into methane and CO2.  And that's happening all over the world. And Ohio is one of the four highest food producers. So that kind of production of biofuel will be a big thing in the future.

Well, that sounds really interesting. And so you all create the biodiesel, and then who all could use biodiesel?

Anyone can use it. That uses diesel, so any diesel engine can use it. But in addition to that, biodiesel, methyl ester can be turned into all kinds of different products. Methyl Ester is that little bottle that you buy from the car stores that cleans your engine in a regular gas tank. So in a regular gas tank, you could take 8oz of this and a full tank of oil and run it through your car, and it's going to clean your engine. It's turned into cleaners, solvents, many other products. And most large companies are trying to do more and more, like most large companies have, that it's a major issue in their company, being able to make more renewable, using more renewable feedstocks for the products that they make.

Incredible. And you have a few of your students here with us today. We would love for them to introduce themselves.

I am Jacob, and nice to meet you, Mr. Lawson. I know you were not principal there when I was there, but I graduated in 2022 with Rianna. He's also on the call. And I'm currently a student at Ohio State. And I wouldn't say I work with biodiesel every day, but I definitely work with chemistry every day, which is something that has been a huge impact out of this program. Ms. Harpen and I have had many laughs in the classroom because chemistry is very challenging, and it's kind of interesting to learn in a challenging situation because you have to learn how to fail, and I'm not very good at that. But I will say this biodiesel project has really tested my limits when I was working on it to figuring out what works, what doesn't work, trying to get the right mindset as a student to kind of improve and progress with anything that we're thinking about, something that I've probably worked more on. Rianna is more of the sciency person on our little duo that we had in our FFA agroscience fair project, which is something that stems off of this. But I was more of, like, the. Trying to look at the big picture and more of sustainability and how it can be used and different things like that. Rianna knows a lot more of the science. She's going to be the chemical engineer. But thank you all for having me.  I know I've learned a lot about this project and have really applied it, even in my animal sciences program, which really doesn't have much to do with fuels.

But you still took the concepts and were able to learn from there.

Yeah, it's actually interesting. So a lot of the livestock feeds has, like, soybean meal in it, and the soybean oil is just a product of making the meal. So it's kind of like a two for one process. I'm more involved in now the soybean meal. When in high school, I was involved in the soybean oil.

Interesting. Very cool. Rianna, how about you? We'd love to hear about you.

Hi. So I graduated in 2022 along with Jacob. Ms. Harpen was our college chemistry teacher. I'm now studying biosystems engineering with a minor in chemistry at the University of Kentucky. So, as you can tell, I've kind of taken my chemistry background, and I'm putting it towards college. But I would just say this research project really helped me learn who I am and what I wanted to do when I got older because it was very hands on and very fun for me to do. I liked the questions behind why are we doing this, and how do we do this? How do we get this done? And especially, how do we scale this up to an industry to where we can use it to better the industry? And as our world is now moving to more sustainable options, how do we create this sustainable option for more people to use at a cheaper cost? So, it was definitely a trip. There was a lot of trial and error. There was plenty of times that we had to sit down and were like, okay, what are we doing wrong here? How do we fix it? And that happens a lot. And a lot of people don't realize how many mistakes are behind your final product, but in order to get there, you have to do trial and error. And we did a lot of did. There was a few batches that we just completely messed up. And Ms. Harpen was like, all right, we got to talk about this. We got to fix this. So it was really cool to see the process, to work through it. And, like, you know, we did the agroscience fair with this. So we also got to go around to the mid America truck show our project there, talk to people about it there, and we got to show it at a few shows around where we live, and people are very interested in it. It's new, up and coming thing. Like I said, it's sustainable. It's a lot of what we're looking to in the future. So it's a really cool project.

It's such a cool project, and I foresee other schools doing this. Mr. Bronson, I want to hear from you. So, is this biofuel, do you use diesel fuel at all, or do you use 100% biofuel? How does that work? And how do you substitute this and incorporate it into your diesel tech training program?

Let's give Jacob and Rianna props here. They won the national FFA competition. Explain that. They were the winners their senior year.

Whoa. That's incredible.

So did you get some scholarship money out of that or anything? The two of you.

So we won a prize for winning that. They really liked our project at the national convention. They actually let us go up on stage and go up on a stage and present our project to people, tell them how it works. So they gave us money for winning. But it was really cool to see our project be recognized because, like I said, it's new, it's sustainable. A lot of people are very interested in it. But, yeah, it's made from used french fry oil, so it's completely okay for the environment. It's better than a company paying for somebody to take their waste when you could just make biodiesel out of it instead and use it for a good cause.

It's french fry oil.

Yes.

Incredible. So you took this french fry oil and made biofuel from it?

There's multiple ways of doing it, but that's the way that we chose to do it.

So I have to tell on Mrs. Harpen. She met me. You'd never think sweet Mrs. Harpen would be hanging out in a biker bar, but we met and picked up some oil at a local biker bar. And it was good oil, too, after she tested that. This dirty old biker bar has got good oil. Sorry.

Ms. Harpen we might need to have a conversation.

So, back to what you ask about the fuel using it here. My goal is to have everything in my shop running on it because it all will run on it. And actually, another thing that it's funny how things have grown. The aviation program here got involved, and they just bought a mini turbine engine, and it will run on it. They have it all mounted to a table. I've got the HVAC program involved in making the exhaust work for it, and hopefully it'll be at the truck show. It should be. I guess they've got it about ready to fire up, I would say, too.

It's really powerful having that cross pollination between the tech folks, the diesel mechanics, and the chemistry department, that we're two completely different worlds, and we both learned so much from each other, and it really made it exciting and totally different.

Yeah. There's know academic end of it in the chemistry lab, which my students are out of place in a chemistry lab. And I'm guessing maybe Rianna and Jacob were a little out of place in a diesel mechanic shop, but just all working together, know, working towards a goal, know, figuring out problems together and seeing how they do things. 

And I've learned a lot with them. I know I need to keep better records, that's for darn sure. And they can tell you exactly down to the drop what they put into something, and I'm kind of a bull in a china shop sometimes with how I do things.

I think it's an interesting question to look at from my standpoint, too, is having those partnerships and willingness to take a risk. I think that's the biggest thing that comes from getting a program like this up and know you had. Mr. Bronson, I know Ms. Harpen this first time I think I've met you, but I know Ms. Harpen. She speaks the world of, and you never would imagine that partnership would happen. And in order to get it off and running, you have to take a risk. You have to take that risk and do it. And I think that's the biggest part that I've come to find out within this whole thing. And with getting any program started that you want to do, there's that risk involved, there's that change, there's that difference. And I think that's the biggest thing, having the right people do it. And you've got two of the best people here that I guarantee you Ms. Harpen should stop everything she's doing in a minute and help anybody get it off and running. But I think that's the biggest thing, is take that risk, be willing to put yourself out there and fail before you can ever think of building a program as successful as these two have.

Yeah, Brian Utter, the science teacher here at my school, last week they did their first small batches and he called me up and was all pumped up. Hey, it worked. It worked. And now they're ready to do their next big batch. And so that's spawned his interest and gotten more kids involved. And, I don't know, it just kind of grows from there. It seems to somewhat take on a life of its own, that people want to get involved, and that's what we're here for, to provide opportunities for students and help them grow.

Yeah. How do you know the biofuel that you create? How do you know that it's viable, that it's good and it's going to work?

You run it in something that can use biofuel. So first you do a burn test to see if it burns, and then you put it. We have these little, as Mr. Bronson said earlier, he's got all kinds of machinery on the lab. We just have little putt boats. Put it in and we just put it around. That's one of the demos we do at the truck shows, is just show people that know 1 tiniest amount of oil will cause these little tiny boats to go round and round and round for five minutes. So that's how you demonstrate on a small scale. But Mr. Bronson has all kinds of sophisticated things that he uses.

Well, the little sterling engines, too, are like a desktop toy, basically, but they'll run on it also. And everything out here, my pressure washer out here, we'll run it in it. We just got to start making a little more.

So you fail when you try to put it in something and it doesn't work, is that the failure in just trying to put that out?

Oh, no. We have all kinds of failures. We have a long list of failures. But no, whenever we make it runs fine. It's the process of learning how to. For instance, we have this new tank this year, a small tank that the diesel mechanics made. You see in the background, there's a bucket on top because there's some splashing. We're running it, and we get splashing. There's oil on the floor. Got to get that up right away. It's not really a failure. But you're like, oh, okay, how do we do this? Or the first time we plugged it in. I know my students were terrified because they're just not used to having a reactor in their classroom, and they had to figure out how to set the temperature, and there's a lot of things you have to figure out.  We decided that the initial mixing, went down to the ag room, where we could open up the garage door, and anytime you do something for the first time, you're going to have a lot of failures before you figure out how to do everything correctly. Anyway, we made a great batch. We just finished up a batch today that looks awesome. But we have a lot of learnings from that, and every time it seems like this, failures get a little bit smaller. First batch we made looked like, instead of looking like fuel, it looked like mayonnaise. That was the batch that Rihanna and Jacob made, and it was a big failure, and we had to start over again and figure out what to do next.

So one of the problems with your reactor is, I believe the pump is too big, and so we got a smaller pump on the reactor. I have here now that we're trying, that Mr. Rudder will try this week or next. And because it was splashing, it was just blasting it too hard, so we had to get a smaller pump here. We also figured out, didn't you make a change in thermometer, thermostat? I changed the flow meter to measure how much water goes in. And, yes, thermostat will dial into the exact degree we need. So a couple of our failures, we evacuated the school. That was pretty epic. The kids really got a kick out of that.

I don't get a kick out of that.

Yeah, I know they don't. Well, it was like when we did the wash process. We blasted the water in. Well, then we forced it in. It needs to rain in lightly. So then went to a shower head, a big 18 inch diameter showerhead. That did it. And that still was too hard. So then we discussed misting nozzles is what Mrs. Harpen directed me to. And I got a misting nozle, like the misters that if you go to amusement park. What else did we have problems with? Well, the one time the kids drain off too much of the glycerin in that process and take fuel with it, well, then the heating element ended up being right at the fuel level. And a heating element that's not submerged gets red hot. Well, what does fuel do with red hot? Metal catches on fire. And the processor was a 40 gallon processor, so it was just tall enough where I can't see down in it without getting on a step stool or ladder. And so the next one we built, and we've since put the element way down at the bottom, we made sure it was totally submerged in fuel, and we have to watch that. So we didn't set the fuel on fire. Mr. Or the school on fire. Mr. Lawson. It was just the top of the reactor, and then when we unplugged, it went out.

The one thing about biodiesel, it's much less reactive than regular diesel. So it's safer. It'll burn, but it's not biodiesel you could store in your garage. Regular diesel you would not store in your garage. So that's the good thing about, when we're talking about red hot coils. It can light on fire, but it's not an explosive thing.

Yeah. And then, so the facts I use, Rianna or Jacob, you can correct me, is there's 10% less energy in biofuel versus pump fuel. Is that true?

Yeah, that's the number we use.

Okay, well, that's where I stole it from. Probably your poster that I saw. So you taught me something.

We're looking at it, and it is actually 75% less emissions when burned in a diesel engine compared to regular diesel. So there's a lot less impact on the environment. Rather than burning more, you might burn more fuel, but there's less emissions, so it's a lot better for the environment.

And it makes fat guys like me hungry. So it sells french fries. Remember that?

Yeah. And the fuel comes from a waste product, right? So, I mean, it's a win.

So the next thing I need advice on with Mrs. Harpen is Amazon flies out of the airport right here beside my school like a dozen flights a day, Amazon prime. And we get all their oil and chemicals and car products, and I'm getting buckets and buckets of hydraulic oil. And I had asked her before if we could make biofuel out of that. And so we need to start doing some experiments with that, possibly if she's got the time to give us some guidance.

This partnership kind of opens the door to a lot of research, which is cool for both of our students and for grants.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. If I'm a chemistry teacher and I'm listening to this and I want to do something like this, where do I start?

Money?

Not really that much, though, would it? I mean, if you're talking small batches and the beakers, a normal science class would have just get you some waste vegetable and some methoxide.

It does. It doesn't take very much. And the Ohio Soybean Council has how to make it at a lab scale, at a lab bench scale published on the Ohio Soybean Council's website, grow next gen. They can get on there, and the lab is right there. For how to do this, they are welcome to contact me. Harpena@bland.org I can send them the lab that I wrote for my students and I've given to other teachers. We did workshops for about three years all over Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York. So right before I got into this with Mr. Bronson.

 Jacob and I also have a research paper out there somewhere that we wrote the whole process down in our paper. We had to submit that for Agroscience fair. So it walks you through all the steps. We mean, of course, it's going to change based on different processes that people use, but that's a basic set up for somebody if they want to try and do research somehow.

Wonderful. We're going to put your contact information in the show notes. So if people want to reach out to you, I foresee you guys having some more opportunities in the future to present on what you've been doing. And I think that a lot of people would be very interesting and interested to hear about what you're doing, whether it's with the FFA or at the association of Career Technical Education or, I'm sure there's other organizations that would just love to do what you're doing to make things more sustainable out there and getting students on a career path that makes everybody excited about chemistry and about being a technician. And so, kudos to you all for really creating this program.

And, Lindsay, can I say one more thing? I didn't add this. The coolest thing about this is that we live in a rural area and our students come from. We have soybean farmers in our classes. And since I was awakened up to what's happening with sustainability and saw that our own families are involved, these soybeans aren't just turned into feed and oil, but they're turned into all these new products. So cool. And then so these rural kids who come from these farms that produce these soybeans are seeing that what they're doing is on the leading edge of what's happening industry. Every major company is working on sustainability and figuring out how their feedstocks could be more sustainable. It's so cool that you have this happening in a rural area.  Anyway, along with that, the Ohio Soybean Council has been tremendously generous with me and with other teachers that are teaching this to their students, because obviously, farmers want their children to know the role that agriculture is playing in sustainability.

So what do you see as the future for biofuel?

We're going to get better and better at making it. Right now, I don't know what the economics are exactly, but if you're using virgin soybean oil, it's more expensive to make all the different products out of it, because we haven't done that. We've spent how many years, 150 years making all of our products out of petroleum, and now we're looking at how we can make them out of used oil or even virgin oil. And it's going to take us a while, just like we've made so many mistakes and we're getting better and better at making biodiesel in the classroom. The same thing will be happening industry, where just get better and better, more efficient, and reduce your costs at making sustainable products from agricultural feedstocks.

Jacob and Rianna, I'd love to hear what you guys hope for your future.

Yeah, I'll hint on this. I am actually on the track to be a large animal veterinarian. But I will say this project has been close by me for the past two years in undergraduate, I've learned so many things from it. Skills of how to work in a lab, how to work in chemistry, how to talk to people at these truck shows. This program has been really helpful in kind of helping me figure out what I want to do. And I know that it's not exactly working in a lab every day, but the program also has provided some sights of what the future of sustainability would be. It's something that I could see myself working with. I really have a lot of thoughts around me here at Ohio State. There's a lot of people thinking about the issue. Ms. Harpen mentioned something about a reactor here, and I'm interested to hear more about that from her later. But there's a lot of people looking forward to kind of what can be brought from this topic.

Absolutely. All around the country for sure.

And at least within my future, I am studying engineering, but I'm planning to be an engineer. And hopefully after I graduate, I can go into the agriculture industry and create more sustainable options for people. It's a big focus right now within any engineering industry, is, for one, how do we make our products more sustainable and cheaper, and how do we improve these processes for a better environment and just for people to be able to afford these products today, diesel costs a lot of money, at least when Jacob and I did this project, Ms. Harpen helped us calculate what our estimated cost of a gallon of biodiesel would be, and it'd be around $2, which thinking about that cost difference is just insane. And like I said, it's less emissions. So the outlook is a lot better for our environment. And also just in the future, it's going to be a big industry. And I'm hoping eventually in the future I can take a part of that industry.

Great. Love that.

And I should say that $2. The estimate is based on using used oil.

Got you.

Yeah. Going to that biker bar and getting that used oil. Gary, how about you? Let's hear. What do you think the future for your program is? And continuing with the biofuels.

Well, the part of the grant for this year was I was wanting a mobile training lab to share with others because the highest level of learning is when a student teaches another to do it. And my goal was to have my kids go to another school and work with students and show them how it's done and do small batches there on site. So we've got the four generators, two reactors, all the equipment we need. We had to gear it up with all the safety stuff and spill stuff and containers to hold the used oil and methanol and methoxide. That is my biggest goal, is to share with others. And I hope that works out. We can come visit bland one day and do some things or visit some of our other feeder schools to get kids interested in this field. I see it paying off with some of the other projects we've done. Kids are saying, yeah, I saw that when I was a sophomore, and that's when I decided I wanted to come to your class. Some of the projects we're working on, I actually had somebody from Fairborn that they met at a Jeep show. These shows that we go to is phenomenal for the kids, too, just getting to talk to the public and see what's out there. And Mid America Truck Show, they're talking to people from all over the world. So I had a kid from Fairborn that wanted to come to my class so bad that they moved their address to a thousand trails campground where they have their camper. And I'll find out tomorrow if he made the cut, but he enrolled in another local school.  Just to be able to come here.

That's incredible. Well, thank you for being on the show today. We're putting your contact information in the show notes, so if anyone wants to reach out to you, they can do that. And we're really excited about what you guys have done and what you will continue to do, and thanks for all you do and for investing in the next generation.

Thank you.