It takes a village to keep the Village the Loveliest on the Plains. Employing over 450 workers in 11 departments, Auburn University Facilities plans and maintains on-campus construction, maintenance and infrastructure.
However, AU Facilities is more than burnt orange brick, strategically placed waste bins and Toomer’s towering oaks. The heart of AU Facilities is its employees who call Auburn home.
Hosting countless services and projects, AU Facilities has kept pace with Auburn’s exponential growth and given its employees a front row seat to campus expansion. In the 2023-24 football season alone, AU Facilities employees worked over 13,000 hours, collecting approximately 9,520 pounds of recycling and placing 1,500 traffic barricades per game.
Their mission is no small feat, but employee collaboration makes it possible.
“They say it takes a village to raise kids, but essentially, we have a lot of young adults on this campus, so to keep it in pristine condition it takes multiple groups with multiple skills and experience levels to keep it the way it is, to keep it the Loveliest Village,” said Brittany Foster, greenhouse coordinator.
Starting her career in 2005 as a student-worker, Foster has grown up with AU Facilities. Now, 20 years later, Foster and her team are responsible for the annual color on campus.
“What I do sells Auburn to incoming students. You step on campus and your first impression is how the grounds look,” Foster said. “We sell the campus essentially, and facilities and landscape, as much as anybody, help sell it more.”
Oscar Preston, operation supervisor for waste reduction and recycling, shared similar sentiments about AU Facilities’ significance. Preston’s department is responsible for all recycling and approximately 60% of solid waste removal on campus.
“I think our job, part of, is kind of simple but at the same time, very important,” Preston said. “I don’t think a lot of people understand how important waste collection is. I mean, I’m almost certain you go three to four days without collecting the waste from campus, we’re going to have a serious problem.”
Maintenance is arguably AU Facilities’ most vital service, and this time-consuming practice combines Preston’s workdays and favorite Auburn experience: football season.
“Football is a fun time for me,” Preston said. “I enjoy the events and everything that goes on on-campus, being able to help a couple others and definitely when you get that feedback from different people. [...] It means a lot to me.”
Clean-up on Sundays after home football games can take up to eight hours, as Preston and employees across departments restore campus to its regular operations for Monday classes.
Auburn alumnus and sign tech Kevin Jackson also prepares Auburn for football games, creating and maintaining campus signage from office name plates and directories, to game day street signs. Yet, amid the busyness, Jackson still enjoys his favorite activity: interacting with Auburn’s favorite tiger, Aubie.
“We work all around campus, so you really never know when you might run into Aubie. There was a time when we were painting over near the Student Center, and Aubie came by, standing up on the back of one of the side-by-sides, with the music playing,” Jackson said. “I like that they stopped to take the time to interact with the workers.”
Event support supervisor Michael Hood helps with logistics, including department transfers, office moves and the assemblage of research equipment.
“We’ll help set [the research equipment] up, put it in place and, of course, haul away the crating and the boxes when [the researchers] are done installing,” said Hood. “We’ve gotten involved in a lot of things, but then next thing you know, you can see all the Auburn news... It’s like, ‘Hey, this researcher is doing this and this,’ and we’re looking like, ‘Oh, we moved that.’”
In addition to expansion and maintenance, AU Facilities is the first step in supporting Auburn University’s role as a research institute. At Auburn, all Auburn Family members, including facilities employees, support each other’s successes, both directly and indirectly.
AU Facilities works behind the scenes to drive the visible success of Auburn University. Through diverse backgrounds and skill sets, its staff including Foster, Preston, Jackson and Hood meaningfully and positively impact campus.
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