As director of contracts and special projects for Auxiliary Services and Operations at 亚洲AV, Buz Grover manages the university鈥檚 contracts for听print, mail, and on-campus banking and ATMs.听He also coordinates oversight of camps and youth programs on campus.

On the job, Grover has managed plenty of new and experimental projects.听When faculty and staff returned to campus during the COVID pandemic, he led the creation of a temporary, on-campus child care facility where the children of faculty and staff could attend virtual school while their parents worked, known as the Patriot Learning Pod.
Outside work, Grover鈥檚 expeditionary spirit goes beneath the surface. As a volunteer with the Cave Research Foundation, Grover explores caves on federal lands, mapping the unknown twists and turns of the earth鈥檚 darkest鈥攁nd coolest鈥攃orners.
How did you get started with this hobby? How long have you been doing it?听
As a result of my misspent youth, the town I grew up in 鈥渋nvited鈥 me to take part in a diversionary program modeled after Outward Bound. We鈥檇 head into the woods with the town鈥檚 police officers and members of a local Special Forces reserve unit to learn outdoor skills like climbing and rappelling. I eventually became one of the program鈥檚 leads.
Several years later, I moved to Champaign, Illinois, where I worked as a lead cook and kitchen manager at the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign. That area of the Midwest is known as the flatlands; there is absolutely nothing to climb up or rappel down. There are, however, caves that you can rappel into and ascend out of. I got connected with a local cave 鈥済rotto鈥 group.

One of my fellow cavers was involved with the听 (CRF). The CRF is an elite group of cavers, so I was surprised when I was asked to attend an expedition in the mid-1980s. I鈥檝e been caving with the CRF for more than 40 years and am now a Fellow with the organization.

When and where do you participate in these adventures?听听
The CRF is chartered by the National Park Service to explore caves on federal land. I do most of my work at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. The CRF has mapped over 400 miles of cave at Mammoth Cave, making it the longest known cave on the planet and a prominent tourist destination. I have also spent time at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico.
Given the length of Mammoth Cave, it can take 8鈥10 hours to get to an unexplored part of the cave. Once there, we spend at least eight hours surveying and exploring new parts of the cave. It takes longer to get out than it did to get in, so it鈥檚 not uncommon for a trip to last 24鈥30 hours. The longest trip I鈥檝e been on lasted 36 hours.听Mammoth Cave expeditions happen almost every holiday weekend, with the exception of Christmas.听
What lessons have you learned?听
The power of effective teamwork and the importance of supporting the group effort. I cooked professionally when I began with the CRF and swore I鈥檇 never take on the surface job of camp management, as it was too much like my day job. But returning to camp after long, exhausting trips underground only to find glops of unidentifiable mush, I decided it was time to share some of my cooking skills with the CRF.

For close to 40 years, I鈥檝e been cooking for the Thanksgiving expedition, smoking turkeys with all the fixings for 35鈥60 cavers each year. I鈥檓 working on a CRF camp manager鈥檚 manual to codify and pass on effective caver care and feeding techniques.听听
What have been the most meaningful or memorable experiences?听
I鈥檝e confronted what I thought were my limits and exceeded them. I鈥檝e crawled through wet, muddy chert tubes for hours, waded in hip-deep water censusing crayfish, read my compass and clinometer in water-filled passages with limited breathing space, fractured a finger and then completed a 100-foot climb, among many other challenges.
A substantial amount of scientific inquiry has occurred at Mammoth Cave and other project areas. None of it can happen until folks like me go in and map the cave, as that allows the scientists to identify where their inquiries took place.听
As a parent, it鈥檚 been wonderful to watch my children grow up attending CRF expeditions and become cavers themselves. I don鈥檛 think they realized it at the time, but my kids were in 鈥渟chool鈥 for the length of any expeditions they attended, learning lessons that stuck with them well after we returned home.
I鈥檝e formed lifelong friendships with fellow cavers, entrusted my life to them, as they have entrusted theirs to me. There are few other endeavors where you and a couple of friends can go out and be the first people to explore a portion of the planet. Few people get to make that claim, and I count myself as fortunate for being able to be one of them.

听听
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