Nathan York: Manager of Campus Services

Nathan York (EBA, ‘23) officially became Manager of Campus Services in January of 2026. Since then, he has transformed the haphazard list of tasks for custodial student workers into a reliable, efficient system, bringing even custodial tasks at PHC up to a standard of excellence.

When Nathan York attended PHC as a student, the student-worker custodial department was virtually self-run by students who took responsibility to find and assign tasks around campus every day. While this created an opportunity for great initiative, it was not always effective. For instance, before important events on campus, custodial workers often needed to stay up very late to clean campus adequately, because there was no system in place to plan ahead or delegate responsibility.

Since then, custodial services have improved somewhat. Current senior Jeshua Grouse (CLA) instituted set times to clean particular areas and a regular trash removal routine. This system of organization was largely task-based. While this was certainly an improvement, PHC asked Nathan York, then an independent contractor, to revamp the entire system to maximize efficiency and productivity. He began creating a new system in September 2025 and took a full-time position at PHC as Manager of Campus Services in January 2026.

One of the first improvements York instituted was the transformation of the central custodian closet (affectionately named Jabba, for Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars) from a chaotic, disorganized dumping ground for supplies to a row of shelves with an army of labeled cleaning products.

(Pictured above: before. On the right: after)

York did not work alone. His team included other staff members and student workers. They reorganized custodial work to maximize productivity and efficiency. The goal was to create 2 hours of work, twice a week for each custodian.

First, to centralize each custodian's efforts, York had to split campus into cleaning zones. This freed custodians to focus on one area, rather than wandering all over campus during a shift. Each zone was supposed to take 2 hours of work to clean, and needed to be geographically centered so that each student only needed to prioritize one general location, even when a staircase, a second floor, or the outdoors were included. "It became a 3-dimensional Tetris puzzle," York said.

By assigning each student to a zone on campus, York wanted his new system to increase productivity. But also, by giving each custodian ownership over their space on campus, and all the tasks pertaining to it, York hoped to encourage custodians to take pride in their own work. Each custodian can walk away from their zone, with it completely transformed from how they found it. 

York saw his continued work with campus services as fulfilling the creation mandate.

At the microcosm, taking dominion of Eden looks like scrubbing the same floor again and again because it perpetually falls into disorder. These everyday tasks are not meaningless but add up to the macrocosm of a faithfully stewarded life. This is not a calling just for custodians: it is for all Christians.

Patrick Henry College exists to glorify God by challenging the status quo in higher education, lifting high both faith and reason within a rigorous academic environment; thereby preserving for posterity the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is the foundation of America.