Emeritus professor of biology David Allison poses with students Amy Lang, Megan Pros, Kat Quigley and Katie Clarizio at Monmouth College’s Ecology Field Station, which is located on the Mississippi River between Oquawka and Keithsburg. Lang, Pros, Quigley and Clarizio were part of a group of 14 students who helped out recently at the 39-year-old facility and got it "cleaned up, organized and usable," according to college lab manager Kathy Mainz.

"They worked their little hearts out," said Kathy Mainz, the college’s lab manager, of the group, which included art and French majors in addition to several majoring in the sciences.

The students, who did "a lot of grunt work," such as cleaning gutters and moving boats and canoes, were not only accompanied by Mainz, but by emeritus professor of biology David Allison.

"He looks after the field station for us," said Mainz. "Even though he’s retired, he continues to go there every Monday to monitor the weather station and collect data. The students showed him a great deal of respect, and he was very appreciative of their clean-up efforts."

Located on the banks of the Mississippi River and on the edge of Big River State Forest between the communities of Oquawka and Keithsburg, the station, which was constructed in 1969, has been the focal point of several courses and research projects through the years. This was the first major cleaning to the facility in a decade, said Mainz.

"The main objective was to get it cleaned up, organized and usable," she said. "It’s been used by our field botany and field zoology classes, and now it’s ready for even greater use."