A weekly inside look at the unique faces and personalities that make up The College of Wooster community.
Sally Kershner
Features Editor
How long have you been at Wooster and what kind of work were you doing before?
I’ve been here six years, seven in January, and before that I spent 10 years working as a research technician at the OARDC [Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center] in the dairy science department. A few things brought me here. I kind of needed a break from where I was at — it was pretty stressful — and I was starting a family, wanted to spend more time with the kids, and Wooster has, you know, better benefits — college reimbursement and all. It was really an easy change for me.
What’s a challenge of your job here?
Other than when we get bad weather in the winter, we’ll be here anywhere from three o’clock in the morning to nine o’clock at night. You know, we eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here; that’s a long day. But other than that, it isn’t bad; I can’t think of much of a challenge other than the fact that, for our department, we’re always outside: rain, snow, it doesn’t matter.
Something you’ve learned?
Mostly just the position of a groundskeeper. As I said, I came from the agricultural side of things; I really didn’t know a lot about turf grass, I just knew you mow grass. But since coming here I’ve learned, you know, when to pick out disease in the turf, on the plants, all the really in-depth stuff. That was a nice thing to add to my resume.
As a groundskeeper, how does it affect you when students walk on the grass here?
Well, it is frustrating. At the [staff appreciation event] you guys had, it was kind of brought up by some of the other guys. That’s their joke on me because I’m the guy that has to fix it. Every year during spring break, it’s my job to re-seed what was the grad site and the paths in the grass, between Kauke and Ebert. We would always have to get that planted and hope to God we would get the perfect weather for grass for graduation. We’ve been really under the gun a lot of years, making sure it was ready. It would be frustrating; I’d spend pretty much all day over there, getting things done, and then just to see that while I’m doing that work, everybody just walking right through it.
Believe it or not, a lot of work does go into doing that, and there were a few days where I would be here till 5:30, 6:00 p.m. just to make sure it was done. The previous president was pretty picky; he wanted it perfect so we had to get it done. It would make you want to just chew your hat bill off.
What would you want students to know about Grounds that they may not know?
One thing would be — we’ve talked about this — like in the winter time, just let students know that we’re doing what we can do. When we have snow, we’re here at 3 a.m., we’re plowing sidewalks, parking lots, making sure things are salted, everything’s clean so everybody can get to their classes, everybody can get to Lowry. And there are some times we’ve heard some comments — because we have some student help that works with us — about how we’re making noise by the dorms at six in the morning, and you know, why isn’t this sidewalk clean? It’s just, we’re doing the best we can. Just have a little patience, because trust me, if we come in on a weekend, our main goal is to make it safe to be out, so we can get home. You know, we don’t want to be out here this early, we don’t want to be in on the weekends, but we gotta make sure that we get campus clean and safe for everybody.
Or right now, in the fall, when we’re blowing leaves — I know a lot of students don’t like the leaf truck ‘cause it’s loud, but we gotta do it. I’ve got a friend who jokes that as a grounds guy I’m just the angry guy that yells [laughs], and that’s not us. We’re easy to get along with — just work with us so we can get our job done.