Plaster Creek Stewards

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A familiar path leads to an unexpected and rare discovery

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 03:09:32 +0000

A familiar path leads to an unexpected and rare discovery msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 08/12/2025 - 23:09

This summer, TJ French begins each day with a familiar routine. From his apartment located on the east side of campus, he heads on foot through the university’s 100-acre Ecosystem Preserve.

“That commute through the woods every morning is a good buffer for me between waking up and being at work,” said French ‘28, a double major in computer science and environmental science from Petersburg, Michigan.

Establishing regular rhythms

When French arrives on the other side of the woods, he’s at the university’s Lake Drive greenhouse, where he begins each day meeting with fellow students on the ecological restoration crew—his research team for the summer.

The team spends time transplanting native plants at the greenhouse and then plants, mulches, and installs curb-cut rain gardens and parkway pocket gardens at various locations throughout the city. These activities result in slowing down stormwater that otherwise heads directly to Plaster Creek along with the pollutants from roadways and yards, affecting water quality in the creek for people and creatures downstream.

“When I signed up to be part of the crew this summer, I didn’t know more about the Plaster Creek Stewards than the paragraph on the signup sheet,” said French. “But I knew it was this organization helping to restore the watershed and it was a job working outside, so that sounded cool.”

French, alongside students and faculty, are daily working on restoration efforts within one of west Michigan’s most contaminated watersheds. His work has a fairly predictable rhythm. But one late July morning was anything but textbook.

Making a rare discovery

On this day, French and his fellow ��app students joined local experts and community partners to help with their mussel survey research.

Donned in chest-high waders, French set out into the creek in a local park and begin to run his hands along the creek’s floor. The goal was to find mussels, pull them up, identify them, and then place them safely back in the water.

“We went into this hoping to find maybe five or 10 mussels,” said French. “And we found hundreds of them.”

While the volume of mussels they found was impressive, French made one of the rare discoveries of the day—pulling up a lilliput—a state endangered species.

“It was a big surprise,” said French. “It was really cool to find something you weren’t expecting. Finding those couple of important species was really exciting and a cool discovery.”

“This is the kind of ecological surprise that reinforces everything we’re doing to restore this space,” said Andrea Lubberts, program manager for Plaster Creek Stewards. “Mussels are like the ‘livers of the river’—filtering water, stabilizing stream beds, and signaling overall stream health. The fact that they’re here in these numbers tells us we have something to preserve as well as restore for the future of Plaster Creek.”

Confirming ��app to be the right fit

French and the team’s discoveries this past month hold importance for the work being done to restore the watershed. And his experience on this team and through his studies at ��app has reinforced his college decision.

“I visited a lot of schools in my last year of high school, and ��app was just one them. My general conclusion from visiting was they were all kind of the same, so it was hard to decide in the end,” said French.

But he said the fact ��app is a Christian university played a major factor in his decision to enroll and reinforced his decision to continue his studies on the Grand Rapids campus.

“I definitely value my faith very highly, and I want to continue to put my faith first in my life,” said French. “I went to a public high school, so this was my first experience with Christian education, and it’s been really good to see how faith can be integrated into science courses and STEM courses, to see there’s a scientific explanation for everything and a religious explanation for anything that exists, and they are connected.”

Wed, 08/13/2025 - 12:00

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��app awarded $488K to connect virtue formation and community-engaged learning

msk23@calvin.edu — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 11:35:00 +0000

��app awarded $488K to connect virtue formation and community-engaged learning msk23@calvin.edu Fri, 07/11/2025 - 07:35

Ask ��app graduates about their education and one word seems synonymous: formative. If you look at the institution’s foundational documents, it’s not hard to figure out why. From the Expanded Statement of Mission to the Educational Framework, ��app is clear about how it is intentionally preparing learners.

“When we talk about education, we are talking about forming the whole person,” said Noah Toly, provost. “If we stop with what we know or what we can do—it doesn’t matter what anyone’s job is after that or how much they earn, if we stop at that metric, we’ve failed. The education we offer is about who we are.”

Awarded a prestigious grant

On July 11, 2025, the Educating Character Initiative at the Program for Leadership and Character awarded ��app an ECI Institutional Impact Grant in the amount of $488,000 for its proposal: Forming Virtue through Community-Engaged Learning: A Proposal for Educating Character at ��app. This three-year project provides ��app the opportunity to take what’s deeply rooted in its ethos of virtue formation and connect it more intentionally to strengthen both longstanding and emerging programs.

“Through scholarship, curricular and co-curricular experiences, and commitment to fostering relationships, ��app has been a leader in the thought and practice of character and virtue formation in Christian higher education,” said Kevin den Dulk, associate provost. “This grant now facilitates a more intentional approach to connecting the dots between what we teach and write about and what we do in practice.”

Working toward desired outcomes

According to the proposal, the primary aims of the grant are two-fold: first, to build a critical mass of ��app faculty and staff with competence in a community-engaged approach to character education; and second, to engage various interested publics—both in the community and across academic networks—in opportunities for mutual learning about the approach.

How this will happen is through funding faculty and staff learning, developing courses and co-curricular opportunities, providing faculty time to reflect on and disseminate their work in ways they haven’t been able to do in the past, and nurturing community partnerships.

Strengthening longstanding and emerging partnerships

The Plaster Creek Stewards was officially started in 2008.

A few of the exemplars of a community-engaged approach that will be focused on are community nursing, ��app’s most mature area for community-engaged learning; sustainability efforts through Plaster Creek Stewards, another long-standing initiative that encompasses multiple disciplines and perspectives; and, most recently, the Wayfinder program, an undergraduate experience for barrier-facing adult learners who explore concepts of calling and civic life through the study of the humanities.

“By connecting community-engaged learning with character formation, this grant helps us to enhance each and make that good work legible to the rest of the world,” said Toly. “We are also looking forward to learning with and from our community partners, to co-creating opportunities for character education, and to joining the broader conversation that the ECI network will bring together.”

The inaugural Wayfinder cohort stands with professors and administrators of the program following their graduation ceremony on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.

Learning and sharing

Beginning in August 2025, the grant’s focus will be on building institutional capacity through establishing learning opportunities and an Office of Community Partnerships. In 2026, the aim is to provide more opportunities for faculty and staff to begin workshopping ideas for community-engaged learning.

Both Toly and den Dulk also emphasize that while there will be a lot of learning happening on campus and alongside community partners, this grant also has a focus on providing ��app faculty and staff the space to disseminate best practices in virtue formation more broadly.

“We have an opportunity through this grant to give Mary Doornbos and Gail Zandee time to write and engage with the broader publics around the work they’ve been doing all these years in the community nursing program,” said den Dulk. “We’ve been doing this work for a long time, but it’s been hidden under a bushel.”

Fri, 07/11/2025 - 12:00

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��app began its community nursing program in 2001.

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Trio of ��app students receive Michigan Sea Grants

msk23@calvin.edu — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 21:12:15 +0000

Trio of ��app students receive Michigan Sea Grants msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 06/24/2025 - 17:12

This summer, five students across the state of Michigan are doing research funded by the Michigan Sea Grant, an initiative of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ��app students Moses Huang, Andrew Slagter, and Naomi Dykstra are three of the grant recipients.

“The fact that ��app secured more than half of these grants among all schools in the state is pretty remarkable,” said Dave Warners, professor of biology.

Categorizing trash

Moses Huang and Andrew Slagter’s research projects are through the Plaster Creek Stewards (PCS). Huang’s project is focused on gaining insight into what types of trash are heading downstream. Through installing a litter boom, a floating barrier designed to prevent litter from continuing to head downstream, Huang is biweekly cleaning up and categorizing the trash. The goal is to improve community awareness to enact change.

“I am very interested in the microplastic issue in the oceans, so doing this research relates a bit to what I’m interested in,” said Huang, a junior from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania double majoring in environmental health and conservation and biology. “I love opportunities like this because it gives me a field base of research.”

Assessing biodiversity

Through a Michigan Sea Grant, Andrew Slagter is doing research in the Plaster Creek watershed.

Slagter is doing a biodiversity assessment of larger green infrastructure in the Plaster Creek watershed. His research focuses on areas that used to be quite urbanized but have more recently been restored to a more natural state through flood plain restoration and bioswale projects. While it’s well known that these projects are beneficial to improving the area by reducing stormwater runoff, Slagter’s research is more novel—looking at what birds, insects, and small mammals are in these areas compared to grass lawns.

“The more we understand about green infrastructure projects and their benefits, the more we can implement them and have the ability to back the funding for future projects,” said Slagter, a junior from Grafton, Wisconsin double majoring in biology and strategic communication.

Creating a plant inventory

Dykstra is adding a layer of research to the Emma Cole Project, which was started 150 years ago by Emma Cole, a scientist, high school teacher, and botanist in Grand Rapids. Cole did floristic inventories in the Grand Rapids area. For the past several years, ��app students have been creating their own inventories of Grand Rapids city parks. This summer, Dykstra is continuing that work as she inventories the diversity of plants today and compares them to the past.

“Every day we go out into the woods at nine different sites, and we collect any flowering plants, bring them back to the lab, ID them, and write down all the data,” said Dykstra, a senior from Grand Rapids, Michigan majoring in environmental health and conservation. “Eventually later this summer, we will give all of this information back to the city so that they know what’s there and can therefore have a better idea of how to manage the parks.”

Ripple effects of research

While Huang, Slagter, and Dykstra’s projects will all have an impact on their communities, they also see the potential ripple effects.

“Having localized research can serve as a model framework or study that can then be expanded into the greater region, into the Great Lakes,” said Slagter. “The more information we can grow at ��app, we are able to propagate through other partnerships and can be adopted by surrounding communities.”

Naomi Dykstra (left) collecting flowering plants with her fellow student researchers.

“Growing up I struggled with seeing the amount of brokenness between humans and the environment and that made me pretty sad,” said Dykstra. “I think working with PCS gave me so much more hope and an understanding of what my role could be, that even though these are really big issues, I can personally help and be a part of a bigger project and a bigger group of people to benefit the environment. This gives me a lot more professional hope.”

Researching alongside experts and mentors

The trio will finish their research projects in late July and have all valued the ability to learn alongside their professors—something they admit is fairly unique.

“I’d say the biggest draw for me is having the small class sizes, direct mentorship, and relationships that extend beyond the classroom. You don’t feel confined to just talking about an assignment or a project but feel the ability to talk about your career interests, to ask broader questions, and to have an open dialogue with your professors,” said Slagter. “A great thing about that specifically for the summer research project so far is because I’ve had a number of bio profs, I’m able to freely consult with each of them in accordance with their specialties.”

“It makes the job so much easier to have experts in the field with you. ��app is surrounded by people who are experts in the field, and they are working directly with you,” said Dykstra. “I’ve done so many different things at ��app that I don’t know would have been possible in a larger school.”

Tue, 06/24/2025 - 12:00

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Plaster Creek Stewards Named 2024 West Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year

msk23@calvin.edu — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 14:36:54 +0000

Plaster Creek Stewards Named 2024 West Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 10/22/2024 - 10:36

Michigan Sustainable Business Forum (MiSBF) is proud to recognize Plaster Creek Stewards as a 2024 West Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year honoree. The organization is celebrated for its leadership in local watershed restoration, particularly in promoting green stormwater infrastructure and fostering collaboration with the private sector and community stakeholders.

Plaster Creek Stewards, an initiative based at ��app, is not just working, but they are transforming the Plaster Creek watershed through innovative use of native plants and Low Impact Development (LID) practices. Their approach combines technical expertise with community engagement, fostering meaningful connections between residents and the creek that unites them. This transformation is a beacon of hope for the local ecology and a source of inspiration for all involved.

“Plaster Creek Stewards focuses on building relationships among the people who live, work, and worship throughout the watershed and strengthening connections between these communities and the creek itself,” said Dave Warners, director of Plaster Creek Stewards and professor of biology at ��app. “Over the past century, the growth of Grand Rapids has severely impacted local biodiversity and ecosystem health. The way the city was developed has also marginalized certain groups, favoring some while neglecting others. Our work acknowledges these injustices to the land and people and is committed to fostering healing. By addressing the harms of the past, we strive to create a more inclusive and more beautiful future.”

Plaster Creek Stewards is deeply committed to nurturing environmental advocates across all generations. Their initiatives, which include supporting high school Green Teams, enhancing undergraduate educational initiatives, and expanding Project GreenER cohorts for adults, are designed to empower individuals to act in preserving and improving the health of their local watersheds. This commitment is a source of encouragement and motivation for all who share their hopeful vision.

Their research addresses pressing environmental challenges while highlighting the critical role native plants play in maintaining ecosystem health and supporting local biodiversity. By documenting the benefits of green infrastructure—such as enhancing biodiversity, improving human health, and bolstering ecosystem functions—Plaster Creek Stewards hopes to inspire practical and lasting conservation practices in the places where people live, work, and worship.

The award will be presented during the 11th Annual Triple Bottom Line Bash on October 23, 2024, at The High Five Grand Rapids. The event will feature an evening of celebration, networking, and a special tribute to MiSBF’s 30th anniversary. Attendees will enjoy a locally sourced dinner and beverages while helping to support MiSBF’s ongoing statewide programming that promotes sustainable business practices across Michigan.

About Michigan Sustainable Business Forum

Michigan Sustainable Business Forum promotes business practices that advance climate leadership, social justice, and the creation of a circular economy. It is Michigan’s leading organization for beyond-compliance sustainability, with a community of practice featuring our region’s most recognizable brands, largest employers, and most innovative entrepreneurs, advocates, and educators. It formerly did business in Southwest Michigan as Michigan’s Great Southwest Sustainable Business Forum.

About ��app

Founded in 1876, ��app is a top-ranked, liberal arts institution that equips its 3,700 students from 48 U.S. states, 66 countries, and five Canadian provinces to think deeply, to act justly, and to live wholeheartedly as Christ’s agents of renewal in the world. ��app offers 100+ majors and programs, including a growing portfolio of graduate-level offerings. ��app students engage in intensive internships, community-based service learning, and significant research that results in publishing and presenting alongside world-class faculty. The university’s 400-acre campus is in the vibrant city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Discover more at www.calvin.edu.

Tue, 10/22/2024 - 12:00

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Plaster Creek Stewards awarded $675K grant as part of Sustain Our Great Lakes Project

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

Plaster Creek Stewards awarded $675K grant as part of Sustain Our Great Lakes Project Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

��app recently received a $674,817 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The grant is one of 43 new or continuing habitat restoration grants that were awarded as part of the Sustain Our Great Lakes project.

“This latest grant will allow us to further reduce the daily load of pollutants entering Plaster Creek,” said Andrea Lubberts, program manager for PCS.

Defending the creek

The project will add native trees, shrubs, and plants to various strategic locations within the Plaster Creek watershed. These natural additions will serve as sponges soaking up stormwater that runs off paved surfaces throughout one of west Michigan’s most contaminated watersheds. Lubberts says that over the course of a year, this project will enable the capturing of three-and-a-half Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water.

“A mature tree can hold 50-100 gallons of water just on their leaves. That’s a lot of rain and that’s not even considering the work the roots are doing,” said Lubberts. “There’s a lot of water movement that trees are intercepting.”

Lubberts says this absorption is crucial to the health of Plaster Creek and its residents. She says the stakes are too high to not take action.

Promoting a healthy creek for ALL

“If we don’t add trees or rain gardens or green features as sponges, then we will continue to have surges of stormwater that overwhelm the creek with polluted water,” said Lubberts. “The paved surfaces contain heat in the summer, salt in the winter, a lot of e-coli from animals and other pollutants which all runoff into the creek if not absorbed. Even the surge is very damaging, these spikes end up eroding the creek banks, creating an unhealthy environment for the creatures that live there.”

It also creates an unhealthy environment for residents—and not all residents are affected the same. Downstream communities tend to receive the brunt of the unhealthy creek issues in neighborhoods already facing environmental justice issues. It’s a key reason why PCS leaders see this work needing to be a more holistic venture than just showing up and planting trees and creating curb cut rain gardens.

“At the heart of the work we are doing with Plaster Creek Stewards is helping neighbors reconnect with the creek and with one another,” said Dave Warners, director of PCS and professor of biology at ��app. “We want to cultivate relationships between upstream and downstream neighbors, to help them see they are all part of the same watershed and show them ways their actions can contribute to the flourishing of their neighbors.”

A shared resource

The neighbors include residents, schools, houses of worship, and various other businesses and organizations. This month, the PCS team will bring together representatives from the various locations they’ll be working on through this grant.

“As soon as you start conceptualizing this upstream downstream situation, what people do in their place influences people elsewhere, it can be applied in so many different areas,” said Warners. “They see they are not nearly as isolated as they thought they were. We all depend on one another, and my actions are going to impact other people. So upstream/downstream thinking opens up all kinds of new awareness I think, it helps us live more thoughtfully and intentionally. We all are one human race, we need each other, and our actions influence one another.”

Committed to renewal

While this current grant provides significant funding and will lead to improvements throughout the watershed, PCS is playing the long game. Since 2009, they’ve received 40 awards totaling more than $5.2 million in funding from 15 different federal, state, and local agencies and foundations. The group has used these funds to transform many more acres of land into natural habitat, install 130 curb-cut rain gardens, and restore floodplains to mitigate flooding and erosion downstream. The work has also involved many partners and brought many communities together to work on solutions to a shared problem.

“What excites us most about this latest grant is that it allows us to invite several new partners into the work of Plaster Creek Stewards,” said Warners. “Water is one of the most unifying features in our landscape, but we oftentimes don’t fully realize it, because we live on roads instead.”

Note: The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government or the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and its funding sources. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government, or the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation or its funding sources.

Tue, 01/09/2024 - 12:00

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��app Addresses Environmental Concerns with New Book on Plaster Creek Watershed

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:24:40 +0000

��app Addresses Environmental Concerns with New Book on Plaster Creek Watershed Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/17/2024 - 01:24

Grand Rapids, MI - May, 2024 - ��app has long been committed to addressing environmental challenges, particularly those affecting the local watershed. In a significant initiative dating back to 2009, the university has focused efforts on the remediation and education surrounding Plaster Creek, a waterway crucial to the Grand Rapids area.

In a new book, "Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha," Gail Gunst Heffner, emeritus, and David Warners, professor of biology, illuminate the problems of Plaster Creek and similar waterways across the United States and urge readers to consider their roles in environmental stewardship.

Plaster Creek, which drains the watershed where ��app is situated, has gained notoriety as the most contaminated stream in West Michigan. The pollution, which comes from various sources including excess fertilizers, salt runoff from parking lots, and drainage from commercial and agricultural areas, poses a significant health hazard due to high levels of E. coli bacteria.

Heffner emphasizes what happens upstream affects downstream communities, with urban areas suffering the brunt of contamination. With deforestation and land development altering the natural landscape for decades, the water runoff into the creek has increased, exacerbating the problem.

In 2009 Heffner and Warners, co-founded Plaster Creek Stewards (PCS)—a collaboration of ��app faculty, staff, and students that work with local schools, churches, and community partners to restore the health and beauty of the watershed. This initiative highlights the university's response to the Plaster Creek challenge. “Our focus has been on education, research, and restoration,” Warners explains. “Faculty and students are actively studying the issues surrounding Plaster Creek, which informs our restoration efforts. We've implemented various practices, including bioswales and floodplain restoration, to mitigate the impact of stormwater runoff.” In fact to date, PCS has received grants and awards totaling more than $7 million from 15 different federal, state, and local agencies and foundations.

One critical aspect of the university's approach is involving the community. Warners emphasizes, “Our work isn't just cleaning up the creek; it's about changing the relationship between people and the creek as well as between people and their watershed neighbors. We want everyone to understand how connected our actions are to the health of the land, water, and other people.”

The significance of Plaster Creek extends beyond local boundaries. As Heffner notes, “Plaster Creek is upstream from the Grand River, which ultimately drains into Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes system. What happens in our watershed affects millions downstream.”

“This isn't just a local issue; it's a national concern,” Warners asserts. “We hope this book sparks conversations and inspires action far beyond our community.”

��app's dedication to Plaster Creek has been ongoing for over a decade, and as Warners concludes, “It's a long-term commitment, but one that is vital for the health of our watershed and our communities.”

Wed, 05/08/2024 - 12:00

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