Main­te­nance Pro­ceeds With Sum­mer Pro­jects

Since most stu­dents liv­ing on cam­pus moved out, the Grounds and Main­te­nance De­part­ment is left with more time to fo­cus on sum­mer pro­jects.  

“There’s hardly any times ever where our dorms kind of sit empty,” Shawn Holt­gren, Vice Pres­i­dent for Stu­dent De­vel­op­ment at Bethel Uni­ver­sity, said. “This gives us a small win­dow of time that we’ve never had to get into the dorms and do some deep clean­ing, to do some ren­o­va­tions, even paint­ing, those types of things.” 

The Phys­i­cal Plant Di­rec­tor, Joe Zap­pia over­sees the pro­jects and makes sure they get done and on bud­get. He com­mu­ni­cates daily with the Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tant to Pres­i­dent Gregg Chenoweth, Miriam Wertz, about the pro­jects. She served as the in­terim plant di­rec­tor be­fore Zap­pia took the role. 

Every sum­mer, the Main­te­nance and Grounds De­part­ment is tasked with mak­ing re­pairs, patch­ing and paint­ing through­out cam­pus. But the deep clean­ing needed for this sum­mer adds more re­spon­si­bil­ity to the de­part­ment. 

“We have started deep clean­ing ALL rooms on cam­pus,” Zap­pia said in an email in­ter­view. “We have cleaned all of the build­ings: sham­pooed car­pets, pres­sure wash all hard sur­faces, and dis­in­fected every area in class­room set­tings.” 

The build­ings that need to be cleaned in­clude the Aca­d­e­mic Cen­ter, the Din­ing Com­mons, the Ever­est-Rohr build­ing, Huff­man Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing, etc. This week, Zap­pia said his de­part­ment will be work­ing in all the dorms.  

In ad­di­tion to re­pairs and deep clean­ing, the de­part­ment is also fin­ish­ing its work on the Wel­come Cen­ter. The ex­pan­sion of the Wel­come Cen­ter will be com­pleted on April 20. 

Zap­pia said the ad­di­tion to the Wel­come Cen­ter is be­ing com­pleted due to the gen­eros­ity of the donors. 

“The Wel­come Cen­ter was do­nated by sev­eral very near and dear to us alumni,” Zap­pia said. “Even part of the Wel­come Cen­ter is be­ing do­nated by a fam­ily that is go­ing on 5 gen­er­a­tions of Bethel Grads. How im­pres­sive is that!” 

The de­part­ment started work­ing on the foun­da­tion for the Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter. The train­ing cen­ter will serve as an­other space for Bethel sports teams to prac­tice. 

Zap­pia is work­ing in li­ai­son with sev­eral lo­cal con­trac­tors in­clud­ing DJ Con­struc­tion of Goshen, IN. The train­ing cen­ter is ex­pected to be fin­ished by De­cem­ber 2020. 

“This new fa­cil­ity will host some much-needed area for work out space,” Zap­pia said. “This will also free up gym space for all stu­dents to be able to have more ac­cess to courts for bas­ket­ball, vol­ley­ball and other stu­dent ac­tiv­i­ties.” 

The other du­ties the de­part­ment is com­plet­ing are in­stalling the ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tem and plant­ing sod. Also, the in­tra­mural fields are go­ing to be prepped for the next school year. 

The de­part­ment will be able to work on their sum­mer pro­jects un­til con­fer­ences start in early June. 

Ten­ta­tively, Bethel is sched­uled to host some con­fer­ences and sum­mer camps. Holt­gren said only one con­fer­ence in May has can­celled so far. Other con­fer­ences such as Sum­mer of Ser­vice in late June are stick­ing to their plans. 

Zap­pia said the Phys­i­cal Plant is the great­est of all time and he ap­pre­ci­ates each of his co-work­ers. He also gave credit to Jerry White for han­dling the bud­getary sys­tem well dur­ing this time.