Cleaning it up
One of the most unique parts of Utah State University is its landscape. The university, located between the Wellsville mountains to the west and the Bear River range to the east, presents a picturesque quality many residents and students appreciate.
From a closer view, the grounds and buildings are a similar picture of grandeur.
This grandeur doesn’t come without a price, though. To maintain this image, hundreds and thousands of man hours go into upkeep and maintenance.
The university currently has a workforce of more than 300 employees. It’s from this base that the grounds and buildings are kept up and the visual appeal of the university is maintained.
Facilities, formerly known as Physical Plant, has had many changes throughout the decades.
“When I first started, there weren’t very many of us. You could know just about everyone who worked for Physical Plant [facilities]. There just weren’t a lot of students who worked on the crews at that time. Things are a little bit different now, though,” said John Danielson, a building maintenance coordinator.
With a growing need to provide a strong visual appearance and upkeep of facilities for students and faculty, the school has gone to great lengths to ensure quality in their employees, he said.
Plumbers, painters, construction workers, mowers, upholsterers, carpenters, gardeners, electricians, landscapers, arborists, landscape architects, a variety of engineers, etc.
The entire campus is broken up into clusters of buildings. A general crew of maintenance staff provides the buildings of their cluster with basic needs like vacuuming, dusting, light repairs and the like.
For bigger jobs, such as construction or specialty assignments, employees with that particular area of expertise are given work orders to complete it.
The grounds are another matter. Professionals direct the work, but a large group of students each year provide labor.
According to rough stats from the Student Employment office, about 70 students were hired for the summer months with an additional 36 hired to work during the fall.
Chris Clark, a sophomore majoring in agriculture, said, in reference to grounds work,
“I like it a lot. I feel like we provide the students with a great place to play sports and have good places to study.”
Many are mowers and groundskeepers. Some work with the gardeners in taking care of the flower beds.
Many are hired to take care of the leaves that cover the university grounds each fall. Whatever the season, there is always a need to keep up the appearance of the campus.
According to their Web site, Facilities has a mission statement that emphasizes their role in the community of learning:
“Facilities champions Utah State University by providing an environment for education, innovative learning and its application in the worldwide community. Our commitment is to actively pursue excellence in all facilities-related roles.”
As with most government jobs, the pay rate is not as high as the private sector.
“I really like my job and the people I work with. The pay isn’t as high as it is in the private world, but that’s expected. The university does an excellent job by compensating us with other benefits. Health and retirement are good and being able to take classes is good for me as well,” John Danielson, said.
-nebutler@cc.usu.edu
Jane Bitner guides leaves into one of the graounds crew utility trucks as Shannon Crook opens the enormous bucket full Wednesday in the afternoon while doing a little fall leaf clean up outisde the Industrial Science building.
Shannon Crook drives the Smithco Sweepstar 60 around trees outside the Industrial Science Building Wednesday sucking up fallen leaves.