#CaltechTogether: Juan Balcazar

“We have been essential staff from the beginning of the pandemic and we were able to plan in advance and have PPE in stock before all the store shelves and online retailers were sold out. Right now, we don’t have any undergrad students in our on-campus housing, but we still do a walk-through at least once a week, sometimes multiple times a week. Some of our buildings are historic and need attention. We've had cases where pipes have burst and luckily we found out in a day or two. Otherwise, we'd have had a huge mess. Initially, when students were sent home, they grabbed what they could fit in a suitcase and left. After it was clear that they would not return for the term, we had to box up 900-plus undergrad students' belongings. We went through every room, boxed all their belongings and labeled and transported them to a storage location. I lost count after 5,000 boxes. Most of our grad students and postdocs who live in off-campus housing are still here and we have been here for them as well. Whenever we go into an occupied unit, we wear coveralls, a mask, shoe covers, and gloves. We try to minimize the amount of exposure for our crew and for our residents too. We are only taking care of urgent requests that could be potential hazards, but we still communicate with our residents and try to assist them with their needs as much as possible. There’s been a lot of good learning, good training for our staff as well. We're doing stuff that we would have previously hired out to vendors, saving us a lot of money. My staff has done a tremendous job from day one. It's definitely been a team effort.”

Juan Balcazar is Caltech’s housing maintenance manager, responsible for student housing properties, both on- and off-campus. 

#CaltechTogether is a special series of #SoCaltech spotlighting the many ways members of our community are joining together to support one another and to take responsibility for our collective health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.