Students who drive to DVC from places like Brentwood, Fairfield or Castro Valley easily spend hundreds of dollars a month at the pump.

Even those closer to the campus point to commute costs as one of their biggest college expenses.

Nursing student Sarina Husen makes the trip from nearby Lafayette. Her commute (plus a “little driving around town”) comes to one or two fill-ups a week at around $50 a pop.

“I don’t know anything about cars,” Husen says jokingly. “They run on gas.”

Still, there are several cheap or no-cost things students can do to increase gas mileage, thereby lowering their fuel and maintenance bills – and polluting less.

“Don’t hit the gas hella much. Light foot, not lead food,” says Sam Malki, 19, a multimedia major who commutes from Berkeley. Malki’s father is an auto mechanic, so he knows about saving gas.

Quick takeoffs and hard braking greatly reduce both mileage and engine life.

Groundskeeper Troy Ricard, who maintains vehicles used by the college and used to be a mechanic, says about hard driving, “You’re dumping a lot of gas. A lot of it goes out the tail pipe instead of being burned in the cylinder like it should be.”

As speed increases, MPG decrease exponentially as the vehicle fights the wind.

At highway speeds, 50 percent of the engine’s power is fighting wind resistance, according to consumerreports.org.

After-market parts such as roof racks, even when empty, significantly reduce mileage at highway speeds, a Consumer Reports study found.

Engines are a combination of a few different complex systems that all rely on each other. If one part is broken or out of tune, the rest of the engine can be affected.

Some of the easiest and cheapest maintenance has the greatest effect on engine life and efficiency.

Regular oil changes and choosing the right oil for your car are both important, as are air filters, which are cheap and easy to replace on most vehicles.

A clean filter can increase mileage by up to 10 percent, according to goodyeartires.com, and can usually be changed in minutes since it only requires loosening a few wing-nuts or releasing a few clasps.

The easiest and most important thing – checking for proper tire pressure – can save more than $1.50 each time you fill up.

“The number one thing is air in the tire,” says mechanic George Curletto of Joe’s Foreign Automotive in Walnut Creek. “It affects gas mileage.”

The suggested tire pressure levels can be found either on the tire itself, on a sticker inside the driver-side door or in the vehicle manual.