Physical Plant
February 23, 2023
Physical plant buckles down for winter
Goshen College’s 135 acre campus is filled with courtyards, sidewalks, athletic fields and over a dozen buildings. The quick but often silent engine that keeps it all up and running is Physical Plant. The department has a wide range of duties, including wiring, plumbing, cleaning, painting and consists of four different areas: general maintenance, custodial, systems and grounds. These four areas bring a lot of responsibilities, so they rarely struggle to keep busy. This is especially true for grounds, which is naturally the department most affected by changes in season. Not only do they have different tasks during different times...
February 2, 2023
GC implements EV charging fee
Goshen College offers two charging ports for electric vehicles on campus. Since their installation, they have been free to use — until early this year, when GC began to charge EV drivers a fee for using the stations. The decision was made following a meeting between GC representatives and officials from the city of Goshen, including engineers, legal staff and accountants. The purpose of the meeting was to maintain consistency between GC’s policies and those of the city itself, as the city recently began implementing a fee for all existing and future charges in the Goshen area. The question of...
January 19, 2023
Elkhart County to remove public recycling site on campus
Elkhart County will be closing the recycling site located in the Goshen College Church-Chapel parking lot on Jan. 20. It has become increasingly difficult for the county to manage public recycling sites due to the amount of trash that is being intermixed with the recycling. “For the last 20 years GC has offered the site as a goodwill gesture to the community,” said Cynthia Good Kaufmann, GC’s director of planning and events. In an effort to make recycling on campus more efficient, Elkhart County and GC are implementing new recycling strategies. GC is adding single-stream recycling bins at the Church-...
November 4, 2021
Union Building goes Geothermal
Over fall break, Steve Shantz replaced the steam-powered heating system in the Union Building with a geothermal plant. The new system, consisting of a well, two boilers and a maze of pipes, will regulate the temperature in the building without using fossil fuels. “When I say boilers, I don’t mean boiling water,” said Shantz, systems manager for the college. “It just makes water hot.” Geothermal plants function by drilling wells into the earth to pull ground water up into pipes. They take advantage of the fact that the temperature inside the ground stays about the same all year round. During...
October 7, 2021
Goshen plugs into an electric future
In 2013, Goshen College’s Physical Plant installed an electric vehicle charging station outside of the Chairman Building, tucked away near the railroad tracks and the 9th Street entrance to campus. Eight years later, the charging station is one of just three public stations in the city of Goshen. This number will continue to grow as the city plans to add several charging stations, contributing to a nationwide campaign to lay the groundwork for vast fleets of electric vehicles. The two-plug EV charging station at the Chairman Building was set up to promote the use of renewable energy, said Glenn Gilbert,...
October 7, 2021
Campus recycling gets trashed
Despite the many carefully-labeled recycling receptacles scattered around campus, understaffing at the Physical Plant and improper disposal of recyclable products has led to almost all of Goshen College’s recyclable materials being thrown away with the trash. One place where the lack of recycling is noticeable this year is in Java Junction. The blue recycling bin in Java Junction is gone, and in its place is a traditional black trash can. Christian Saleh, a student supervisor at the coffee shop, was surprised by the change when he returned to campus after the summer. But he understands why the switch was made. ...
November 9, 2020
New 10th Street entryway to replace GC’s Ninth Street entrance
Goshen College’s campus could have a new entrance by next spring. The proposed project, which is steadily moving through the approval process with the City of Goshen, would open an entrance at 10th St. and College Ave. The Goshen Plan Commission has recommended approval of the plans to the city council which suggests that the project will soon have full approval. The construction stage is dependent on weather and the contractor’s schedule, but it could start before Christmas. The goal is to have the entrance open by next spring. The driving factor to complete the new entrance is the neighborhood...
October 15, 2020
GC lights way towards sustainable energy
Steve Shantz can turn on a lightbulb with his tongue, but that’s only a minor magic trick in comparison to his main stunt with LED lights at Goshen College. Shantz and his team of student workers are nearing the completion of a multi-year project to switch campus over to LED lighting and drop the college’s energy usage to a new low. Shantz, systems supervisor for the Physical Plant, committed to a college-wide transition to LED lights about two years ago. The project is now 90% complete, and he plans to keep working until every light on campus has been upgraded,...
September 17, 2020
A clean campus for all: Custodians stay busy
Even after a majority of students left campus last March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the custodial department remained at work. A GC custodian’s day starts at 5 a.m., according to Christy Farley, custodial supervisor. Farley has worked for the custodial department for five years, and was promoted to supervisor two years ago. The custodians clock in at 5 a.m., clean until their break from 9-9:30 a.m., break at 11 a.m. for lunch and then clock out at 1:30 p.m. The earliest impact on the custodial department took place “when the students were sent home due to COVID-19,” Farley said....
November 29, 2019
Thank a custodian, clean up after yourself
Cleaning Goshen College is hard work. 20 buildings, 81 classrooms and 117 restrooms with a total of 265 toilets — 11 custodians clean them all, every day. Tables, whiteboards, floors, windows and bathrooms are central to living and learning on campus, but the people who clean them work behind the scenes. Christy Farley, custodial supervisor, said that much of what the custodians do goes unnoticed until something doesn’t get cleaned, either because a custodian is absent or because an emergency cleanup draws custodians away from other areas. “When things don’t get done, people notice,” said Farley. But almost always, things...
September 25, 2019
Robot Mower the ‘Way of the Future’
A robot trims the grass at the College Cabin. The neighbors have named it Wilson. Wilson is a Husqvarna Automower 450XH: an automatic, battery-powered, GPS-controlled lawn mower. The college bought the mower in July, and it’s been mowing since. “Nibbling,” said Glenn Gilbert, director of facilities. “We don’t call it mowing.” The mower is about the size of a car tire, with three razor blades mounted on a spinning disc under its sleek, grey frame. It rolls low to the ground, and sports LED headlights (useless for the mower, helpful for humans). For every four and a half hours of...
February 15, 2018
GC celebrates lowest energy consumption in 25 years
As 2017 came to a close, Goshen College celebrated its lowest year of electrical consumption since 1991 — despite building space increasing by 60 percent — seeing a 23 percent reduction from 20 years ago and a 35 percent reduction from 10 years ago. Reducing the energy consumption is an important goal at GC. Glenn Gilbert, director of facilities at the college, explained how since 2005, when energy prices spiked following Hurricane Katrina, the college had been using an energy management system and had been more aggressive with scheduling. “If you go into a room and it’s not scheduled to...
February 11, 2016
Sewer line collapse causes minor flooding in KMY residence halls
Sewer water flooded lower-level drains Thursday morning due to a pipeline collapse near the Miller, Kratz and Yoder residence halls. The 56-year-old clay pipeline connects all three dormitory sewer lines at the railroad tracks, where it then passes under the tracks and continues into the Main Street sewer system. The blockage is presumed to be located where the three lines meet. The first report of sewer backup was in the lowest residence hall location, a Yoder first apartment where Laurel Breckbill, resident director, lives. Water was forced up through her bathroom floor drain, causing minor flooding. There were also reports...
February 19, 2015
Meet the GC shoveling crew
During the winter months, the Goshen College campus is often blanketed with a layer of snow and ice that cover not only the soccer field and grass, but also the sidewalks, the entrances to buildings, different stairways and the underpass. While the sidewalks are cleared by two full-time workers and one half-time outside workers, staffing cuts in the past five or six years have led to the Physical Plant hiring students to take care of the areas that are not accessible by machine. This bas been going on for three years now and Craig Johnson, ground supervisor at the...
September 24, 2014
Physical Plant Grounds Supervisor Beautifies GC Campus For 24 Years
The grounds crew supervisor has experience and a passion for the outside of campus. Craig Johnson enjoys being outside. This is a valuable quality for a man to have when his job includes taking care of campus and managing others who do the same. However, the work of a grounds crew supervisor extends far beyond mowing. “What we do every day varies,” Johnson, head of the grounds crew at Goshen College’s Physical Plant, said. “It changes depending on the season or what is happening on campus.” Johnson typically starts off the week with a Monday morning trash run, emptying all...