Six days a week, some of the nine Ball State shuttle buses run up and down McKinley Avenue — their drivers counting every passenger as they go.
Transportation Services currently employs five full-time drivers as well as 21 student and 15 substitute bus drivers.
Before the drivers hit the streets, they must be older than 21, have an Indiana driver’s license, complete a five-week class and pass a physical and other tests in order to obtain a commercial driver’s license (CDL).
The requirements didn't deter Linda Griffiths, a full-time driver who started out her Ball State career as a custodian in 1989. She inquired for the bus driver position in 1995 after seeing a job posting.
She made a phone call and discovered the requirements — at that time, a year’s worth of bus driving experience as well as a CDL.
The day after, she saw an ad in the newspaper stating that the school bus company was hiring and offering CDL training.
Her daily routine for the next year included midnight shifts as a Ball State custodian and driving a school bus in the morning and afternoon.
Griffiths currently works 40 hours Monday through Friday. She said she “loves driving buses and loves Ball State,” but there is one thing she wishes students knew about boarding the bus.
“When [students] are coming to the bus and looking down at their phone, I wish they’d motion to me that they want the bus or give me some indication so I’m not waiting and they walk on by,” Griffiths said.
Isaac Steury, a senior criminal justice major, has been employed as a student bus driver for one year. He learned about the position from a flier inside a shuttle bus.
His father is also a school bus driver.
Steury works 16-20 hours per week and said the only downfall to the job is the inability to do homework like some other on-campus jobs because “you’re constantly doing something [when driving].”
Steury said his friends ride his bus and he enjoys getting to see “a bunch of people every day.”
“Everyone knows me. If I’m out at a restaurant or something, someone will come up to me and say, ‘You’re the bus driver,’” Steury said.
At every stop, drivers record the time they got there and the number of people who board. This is done to track long-term trends and see if more buses are needed, Steury said.
Bruce Piner, Ball State’s trainer and special events operator, has been a Ball State employee for eight years but a bus driver for 30.
At Ball State, he has driven President Paul W. Ferguson and Grace Ferguson and eaten lunch at the home of David Letterman’s mom, Dorothy Mengering.
Mengering invited Piner inside after he drove former President Jo Ann Gora to her house for a meeting.
Transportation Services will be hiring more bus drivers in March, Piner said, although the new recruits might not be transporting important university officials.
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