On Saturday, September 27, 2014 twenty students from Dr. Janice Clark’s HLTH 362, Environmental Health class and the Student Public Health Association cleaned Bear Creek from Normal Street to LaHarpe Street. (This is the section of the creek as it flows through campus.) They began the morning with a short lesson by Michele Woolbright about the rain garden, located at the corner of Franklin and Patterson Streets. Then, the students got their mesh stream clean-up bags and began methodically cleaning segments of the creek. They found numerous plastic bags, plastic bottles, cups, glass bottles, a 6-foot metal pipe, and lots of other trash in the creek. Their efforts resulted in 15 bags of trash and 3 bags of recyclable bottles and cans. As the morning concluded, Dr. Clark discussed the importance of the riparian border on the effect of stream flooding and the amount of trash going into and out of the stream. Although some students got wet beyond the height of their boots, they all had a good day and the stream looks better for their efforts. 
