Starting their morning as early as 6:30 a.m. every day, Point Loma Nazarene University’s Department of Grounds Maintenance tends to the entirety of the campus from trimming trees to setting up the sports fields before games.
PLNU ranks second out of 109 colleges in California with the best location, according to Niche.
The Department of Grounds Maintenance strives to present PLNU to its utmost potential, according to Will McKinney, PLNU grounds manager.
“I strongly desire to have this property be as beautiful as any resort hotel in San Diego,” he said. “When students, their parents and faculty staff come to the campus, they should say, ‘Wow, look at this landscape.’”
He has been PLNU’s grounds manager since early July. He said his vision is to exceed the property’s potential.
“All we need to do is put in the time and effort to give it the detail and the attention and the love it deserves,” he said.
The Department of Grounds Maintenance consists of two teams to cover the entire campus: groundskeepers and the athletics field team.
McKinney said that the groundkeepers handle setting up the tables and umbrellas on Caf Lane alongside tending to the landscaping. The athletic fields team maintains the soccer and baseball fields.
The groundskeepers consist of six full-time employees, an enhancement specialist who is specifically responsible for the tables and umbrellas and 10 student workers this semester.
The athletics field team has four full-time employees with one assistant manager per field, and three student workers.
McKinney said the job requires physicality.
“We work in all sorts of weather conditions,” he said. “In grounds keeping, we can teach just about anything you would need to know. But showing up with that willingness to work and put up with 90-degree weather or rain — that you can’t teach.”
As for the department’s student workers, a majority of them are part-time workers who work between 6:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. with a 10-hour minimum a week commitment.
“The most important thing a student has is attitude and willingness to work,” McKinney said. “The willingness to come out and put in a full day of work, do their best, do what they can and care about what they do.”
The student workers come from various backgrounds unrelated to landscaping, which McKinney said surprised him.
Kaleb Lunde, a third-year accounting major and student worker for the athletic fields team, has been working for landscape since last October.
“I enjoy what I do. I love to do manual labor as it can be very satisfying and rewarding,” Lunde said.
He said he became interested in landscaping for two reasons: His dad owned a landscaping business, so he had experience in it, and he loves manual labor.
Lunde’s job consists of maintaining the various athletic fields, including baseball, soccer and other athletic facilities.
The grounds department sets PLNU’s first impressions.
Maddy Jones, a second-year health science major, and Kawena Kauleinamoku, a second-year applied health science major, both said that their first impressions of the campus were how well-kept it was.
“There is hardly ever any trash on campus, keeping the campus looking very clean,” Jones said.
“The ocean view and the landscaping go very well together, making it a peaceful environment,” Kauleninamoku said.
That is what the department of grounds maintenance works toward and for.
“This was something that, when I was hired, Jeff Bolster [vice president of university services] wanted me to be really aware of,” McKinney said. “Some students are not San Diego natives, and they look at the ocean with a ‘Wow.’ But our landscaping doesn’t change the quality of our teaching, or the fine institution we have here. It’s like the icing on the cake.”
Kaelyn VanderSpek