About the Department
"The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope." - Wendell Berry
As the grounds department, we maintain over 60 acres of land, including the downtown campus, parking lots, residence life facilities, and the Grice Lab at Fort Johnson. We create and maintain gardens across campus, decorate the campus for commencement ceremonies, and holiday events. We are also responsible for the College's in-house composting program, which entails collecting compostable items from local restaurants, departments, and students. We then use the contributed items to create rich and nutritious compost which is applied back into the gardens and sites on campus. Whether cultivating crops, redesigning urban spaces, watering the many container gardens and flowers, or caring for the beautiful flora here on campus, we do our best to maintain a vibrant and creative environment.
Community partnerships and collaboration opportunities are highly valued here, as we are constantly seeking to connect with a diverse set of community members on projects. The compost and urban gardens programs provide opportunities for students and the college community alike to take action on campus and to learn more about growing food in a way that preserves and cultivates the soil, rather than depleting it. Aside from growing annual food crops and perennial plants, we put strive to create closed looped systems by taking advantage of the abundant resources on campus and in the city that would other wise head to the landfill. We strive to cultivate creative approaches in addressing our waste streams, and to use those outputs as resources to fuel our projects! Check out our compost and urban gardens page to see how we have been getting our hands dirty!
Meet the Team
Verneil Phillips - Grounds Manager
Paul Andrade – Lead Supervisor
Walter Brown – Enhancement Crew
Lamont Moore – Enhancement Crew
Chris Mahoney – Maintenance Crew
Sam Frazier – Maintenance Crew
Steve Robinson – Maintenance Crew
Craig Jones – Pesticide Applicator
Michael ‘Paul’ Mishoe – Maintenance Crew