Craig Roncace puts his green thumb to work

Long before Craig Roncace became Penn’s urban park manager, he cultivated a green thumb and a knack for outdoor work. In his youth, Roncace held several jobs related to landscaping, gardening, recycling, tree and lawn care, and outdoor maintenance. These early experiences drove him to pursue a career in park management and campus sustainability.

“From my earliest jobs, I loved to be outside, often working on grounds and landscape maintenance at a variety of locations,” says Roncace, who has served in his role on the Operations and Maintenance team in Penn Facilities & Real Estate Services since 2016.

Roncace oversees five “shops” within his division: athletic field management; Penn Park upkeep; hard surface maintenance; gardening and grounds care; and waste management, recycling, and moving services. Each shop collaborates with Penn schools and centers to ensure their maintenance needs are met; that campus is clean, safe, and well-kept; and that the University ensures a welcoming outdoor environment for everyone.

“My core responsibility is to have our campus well-maintained: trimming the trees, making the fields game day ready, keeping the trash removal flowing forward, and getting everything where it needs to be,” Roncace says.

From event support to community engagement

Beyond supporting Penn’s daily operations, Roncace and his team also have vital roles in annual events like Move-In, Hey Day, Commencement, Alumni Weekend, and the Penn Relays, which generate waste and recycling that require amplified efforts.

“While walking around campus, buildings and grounds may be the first thing you notice,” Roncace says. “For our community members as well as for visitors, the surrounding landscape should make a great impression and experience for all.”

Roncace keeps the varied experiences of first-year students in mind when working to build an inviting campus environment.

“We understand that there are a lot of students who are away from home for the first time,” Roncace says. “We just want to keep [Penn] as welcoming as we can, from Move-In until the day they leave Franklin Field after graduation.”

When strategizing to build sustainability initiatives, Roncace also considers how Penn symbiotically anchors itself in Philadelphia.

“We’re sharing a lot of spaces—and a lot of responsibilities—with the city itself, whether it’s trash removal, curb line cleaning, snow removal,” says Roncace, noting that his team has collaborated with the Streets Department and other Philadelphia institutions to support campus maintenance and safety.

Ensuring a sustainable campus for all

Roncace and his team support ecological and environmental landscape initiatives on Penn’s 300-acre campus—which is home to approximately 6,700 trees and numerous gardens—through varied responsibilities like native plant care, mature tree preservation, and stormwater management, as well as research and training on maintenance protocols.

Going the extra mile, Roncace is a member of the strategic waste subcommittee of the Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee, which supports Penn’s Climate & Sustainability Action Plan 4.0. He leads data collection and analysis on campus waste diversion, measuring and comparing waste-related efficiency across schools, centers, departments, and buildings.

This work “goes hand in hand” with his urban park manager position, Roncace says, by enabling him to better understand waste and recycling behaviors at Penn and build communication tactics that help drive the University’s diversion from landfills.

“That’s what we’re trying to do here: simplify the message, change the behavior,” says Roncace, citing a 56% increase in compost weight collected at Penn during fiscal year 2024-25 versus the previous fiscal year.

Above all, Roncace enjoys his job because “each day is different,” allowing him to continually put his green thumb to work and challenging him to solve new sustainability problems as they arise. “No two weeks are ever the same in this role,” Roncace says.