Creighton, Sarah Hammond

ADDRESSES:

Office—Tufts University Information Technology, 169 Holland St., Somerville, MA 02144. E-mail—creighton@tufts.edu.

CAREER:

Author. Served as director of campus sustainability and project manager of the Tufts Climate Initiative at Tufts University.

WRITINGS:

Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.

Environmental Directions, 1999-08-15, No. 1129 (sound recording), Educational Communications (Los Angeles, CA), 1999.

(With Ann Rappaport) Degrees That Matter: Climate Change and the University, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author Sarah Hammond Creighton is an expert on the issues of sustainability and climate change, specializing in what colleges and universities can do to promote sustainability and environmental concerns on campus. She has served as director of campus sustainability and project manager of the Tufts Climate Initiative at Tufts University. Creighton has used her more than fifteen years of expertise in sustainability issues to publish books on the subject as well, focusing on sustainability efforts at educational institutions.

Creighton's first published book was 1998's Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions. The author begins by demonstrating the burden that colleges and universities place on natural resources, and how these institutions impact the environment. Creighton also makes recommendations on how colleges and universities can lessen this impact by recycling, conserving, and making other smart changes, both on a large and small scale. She offers these recommendations on many levels, examining these institutions' methods of operation, facilities, and services offered in order to demonstrate opportunities across the board. Specific examples include identifying indoor air quality issues, auditing the water usage of college facilities, and determining more efficient use of the current space of the institution. The author also spends one chapter discussing how to handle barriers to making a campus more environmentally friendly. Creighton uses her own university's program as an example of how to develop a broad-based program, and also outlines additional resources readers can access in the book's appendices.

Critics and readers responded positively to Greening the Ivory Tower overall. Some critics cited the author's easy-to-follow directives on creating a sustainable campus as one of the highlights of the book. Creighton "will guide you step-by-step" through the process of making your college more environmentally friendly, wrote Sara Knight in a review for Earth Island Journal. Others found the book to be well-rounded and thorough, making the task of sustainability seem attainable and realistic. Greening the Ivory Tower has the "potential to be a viable and enlightening resource" for many institutions, noted Journal of Environmental Education contributor Marylin Lisowski.

In 2007, Creighton published her next book on the subject of the environment and universities, Degrees That Matter: Climate Change and the University, with coauthor Ann Rappaport. Rappaport and Creighton, who work together at Tufts University, give readers an overview of relevant climate issues and discuss how colleges and universities can set goals and strategies to reverse or slow down the effects these institutions have on the environment. The authors also focus on the importance of universities creating a master plan and cover the value of each community member taking part in reducing global warming. Creighton and Rappaport suggest ways to tap into student energy and give examples of classroom projects that can help inspire climate action. Degrees That Matter proved to be another strong contribution to literature addressing the role colleges and universities can play in environmental stewardship. The book "offers practical guidance" to institutions that are interested in becoming leaders in the global warming movement, noted a writer with MIT Press. Others felt that the book would serve as a useful tool and guide for all colleges and universities. Degrees That Matter "is an invaluable handbook," wrote Harold Henderson in a review for Planning.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Change, September 1, 1998, review of Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions, p. 66.

Choice, November 1, 1998, W. Ouderkirk, review of Greening the Ivory Tower, p. 539; October 1, 2007, H. Doss, review of Degrees That Matter: Climate Change and the University, p. 321.

Conservation Biology, October 1, 1998, "The Green University," p. 1158.

Earth Island Journal, March 22, 2005, Sara Knight, review of Greening the Ivory Tower, p. 15.

Journal of Environmental Education, June 22, 1999, Marylin Lisowski, review of Greening the Ivory Tower, p. 44.

Nature, July 5, 2007, "A Greener Education," p. 28.

Planning, August-September, 2007, Harold Henderson, review of Degrees That Matter, p. 68.

Times Higher Education Supplement, July 20, 2007, "A Green Bible for Campus," p. 21.

ONLINE

Chronicle of Higher Education,http://chronicle.com/ (August 5, 2008), interview with Sarah Hammond Creighton.

MIT Press,http://mitpress.mit.edu/ (August 5, 2008), review of Degrees That Matter.

Tufts University,http://www.tufts.edu/ (August 5, 2008), author profile.