Tom Everett thinks a lot about first impressions. As the grounds manager for HES Facilities Management, he and his team are responsible for everything that grows across Baylor University’s 300-acre Waco campus, including the flower beds at the entrances that greet prospective students and their families as they drive in for the first time. Right now, the entrance beds are filled with bright, colorful pansies. Everett said throughout the spring, when everything is in bloom, his team will plant more than 15,000 square feet of flowers across campus.
And that’s just part of the job. When Everett isn’t planting flowers, he’s seeding and maintaining the lawn at the Fountain Mall in preparation for homecoming, or removing worrisome branches from Baylor’s 4,000 trees, or cleaning thousands of fallen leaves from those trees. A lot of what Everett’s team does is the kind of behind-the-scenes work that isn’t noticed, but felt.
All of it comes from a place of dedication to ensuring Baylor’s reputation as one of the most beautiful campuses in the country, and one that everyone in the campus community—from first-year freshman to the vast network of Baylor alumni—can be proud of.
“The first impression is everything when it comes to the grounds,” Everett said. “A lot of the students have parents who are alumni here, and they can remember how the campus used to look years and years ago.”
Maintaining Baylor’s beauty, from the grass to the steeples of campus buildings, means paying reverence to Baylor’s history while keeping an eye firmly fixed on the future. Everything the University’s expansive facilities team does keeps everyone from alumni to future students and their families in mind. The goal is to create a campus that feels like home to former students and can adapt to the needs of students for generations to come.
“It’s important to think about where the University is going in the next fifty, one hundred years,” said David Bess, Assistant Vice President of Planning and Construction and University Architect for Baylor. “We want to make sure that we preserve the history that we had from 100 years ago, and that we maintain a connection between Baylor alumni and students from the 1920s to the 2060s.”
That connection is a huge part of what Bess and Everett consider as they plan new projects and work to maintain existing structures. When you think of Baylor, a certain image comes to mind: Classic architecture, Georgian-era buildings, and rolling lawns of emerald grass. Everett and Bess’s teams, composed of dozens of workers who do everything from pressure washing the sidewalks to drawing plans for new buildings, are responsible for maintaining an adherence to those long-set standards while also thinking about how the campus can be improved as it steps into the future.
One project that’s emblematic of that ethos is Everett’s recent involvement in Baylor Homecoming: a longstanding tradition that welcomes thousands of alumni back to campus. In previous years, the traditional Homecoming bonfire has damaged the Fountain Mall lawn, which Everett’s team worked around the clock to revive in time for this year’s celebration. To remedy that, the team hauled in truckloads of sand to use as a protective base beneath the bonfire, which they dispersed throughout the lawn once Homecoming was over. Everett doesn’t want traditions like the Homecoming bonfire to go away or become unrecognizable—he’s more interested in finding sustainable solutions to keeping them around for years to come.
The same is true for how Baylor’s team of architects approach new buildings. Bess, who joined the Baylor staff in the past year, is aware that each structure is a permanent addition to an ever-changing campus. The goal is to make sure that everything from Baylor’s first building—Old Main, built in 1887—to the newly built Mark and Paula Hurd Welcome Center feels like it belongs on the same cohesive campus. Bess’s team oversees projects of all sizes, from $20,000 to more than $200 million. No matter the size and scope, his mission remains the same: To build structures that feel distinctly Baylor, and that will welcome students for many, many generations.
“We want to be cutting edge, but we also want to be timeless,” Bess said. “And part of that timeless piece is that you don’t forget where you came from.”
Bess’s team works to seamlessly blend new construction projects into Baylor’s storied Georgian architecture by using a variety of materials.
“We have a tendency to lean on brick and limestone and try to match the color palette that you see across the campus,” Bess said.
The team also blends architectural styles in subtle ways, like by adding Georgian-era finishes to windows in buildings that are otherwise strikingly contemporary. Attention to details like these are a great reflection of what Baylor represents for so many current and former students: A university where longstanding tradition is constantly met with new ideas and innovations.
While Everett and Bess lead independent teams, both said the two departments work together to maintain the campus we see today. “The buildings here are just absolutely beautiful,” Everett said, adding that pride in how beautiful Baylor’s campus is evident through the way student tour guides lead prospective Bears through campus for the first time.
“I’ve taken the tour, and you can see the passion when students are talking about how excited they are about their school,” he said.
For both Everett and Bess, the biggest reward comes in knowing that their work, no matter how subtle or behind the scenes it may feel at times, can be immediately appreciated by Baylor students and their families. Everett sees that appreciation in the way students interact with outdoor spaces—sitting beneath the shade of a century-old tree or reclining to study on a well-maintained lawn. And for Bess, it’s the sensation of knowing immediately that you’ve arrived on Baylor campus—for the buildings and grounds to be so distinctly Baylor that there’s no question you’ve arrived.
No matter how much the campus may evolve, people like Bess and Everett work tirelessly to ensure that Baylor always feels like home to anyone who’s passed through its halls. That’s no small feat for a school that’s been around for more than a century. It’s a welcome challenge: to be part of Baylor’s long history, and to have a hand in how the University continues to shape the future.
