It takes a lot of people to make Mercer University the institution that it is. The students have and always will be the lifeblood of our University, but Mercer wouldn’t be Mercer without expert faculty members to pass on their knowledge and highly-skilled staff members to manage day-to-day operations. Our “Worker Bears” series highlights the Mercer employees who work tirelessly, often behind the scenes, to care for our University and our students.
Meet Jep Cephus
Title: Maintenance staff for Physical Plant on the Atlanta campus
How long he’s worked at Mercer: Cephus has been a Mercer staff member for 40-plus years, but he first stepped onto the Atlanta campus as a student when it was known as Atlanta Baptist College before merging with Mercer. He came on scholarship as a basketball recruit for the Atlanta Golden Eagles. Cephus graduated with a degree in psychology in 1974 and started working at Mercer later that year. He was promoted from groundskeeper to maintenance to assistant director. He is semi-retired now and works on campus three days a week.
What he loves most about his work: “Working in Physical Plant, we’ve always been a team organization. Once you have a good team, it makes coming to work much more pleasant. I work with great people,” he said.
Although the Atlanta campus has grown a lot since the 1970s, Cephus said he has always loved its rural look and setting and its family feel. It has been filled with kind, down-to-earth people and great leadership, including Dr. Jean Hendricks, the first dean of Mercer’s College of Arts and Sciences in Atlanta.
