Sarah Bartges

I grew up in New York City, on the Upper West Side.  For all of my childhood I attended a small Waldorf school called Rudolf Steiner. Although I have many fond memories of Steiner, such as knitting class, playing clarinet badly in the orchestra, carving a sculpture from a piece of driftwood in woodwork, etc…,  my fondest memory is of our yearly trips to the Hawthorne Family Farm in upstate NY.  For one week, all of us city kids were transplanted into a beautiful environment where mooing cows with tinkling bells and the smell of fresh cut hay were the backdrop for our days.  It was probably these trips, starting in 3rd grade, which sparked my love of nature and awareness of what a holistic and healthy environment actually looked like.  

Feeling the need to get out of stinky NYC in the summer, I worked for many yers at a sleep away camp in rural New Hampshire.  Teaching always came naturally to me and spending 7 blissful weeks hiking, swimming, and frolicking in the countryside with my campers was paradise.  However, real life always came back in the fall, and in September 2005 I began my first year at Georgetown College, in Washington D.C., where I intended to study international studies. Instead, I became very involved in the environmental action group on campus, which a friend and I resurrected from near oblivion our first year.  One day I was talking to some of my classmates about the earth day activities we had planned for the weekend - the conversation went something like this,  me: “c’mon, if you even have an ounce of interest in the environment you should come to one of our fun events!” The response: “year, sounds fine, but I really don’t have any interest whatsoever in the environment or saving it”.

Shortly after this disheartening conversation I transferred to Barnard College in order to study Environmental Policy.  Although it was intense starting a completely new major as a junior, I still made time to work at the Tompkins’s Children Nursery and the Barnard Greenhouse. Through these two places I was afforded a break from grueling academics and was able to fulfill my craving for working with children and plants!  During my senior year I was awarded an Earth Institute Fellowship to study the carbon sequestration potential of farmland in the Hudson Valley at the NASA institute with Dr.  Cynthia Rosenzweig.  Writing my senior thesis on this topic was not only a way for me to conduct scientific work on a topic that has always been dear to me -  agriculture in NY state, but also allowed me to explore ways in which local farmers could supplant their meager earnings through a local and transparent carbon credit market.

While I was searching for meaningful employment during my spring senior semester at Barnard, I came across summer internship possibilities at CSS - I quickly realized that this was an environment I would love to work in and applied for the position. In June I worked with Prof. Jones on the Renewable Energy J-Term, and in July I helped to run the STAR summer program with Professor Hill, Professor Petro (of Morningside Area Alliance) and a number of other inspiring Columbia students.  The STAR program’s focus is to educate and encourage students to be environmental stewards, engineers, and empowered leaders of their community.  Having a mother and a grandmother who are teachers I always proclaimed that never would I follow in their foot steps!  However, after being exposed to the joys of working in the CSS community for a mere 2 months I knew that teaching was a career path that I wanted to pursue.

This semester I am continuing to teach environmentally focused courses through my Sustainability elective and Creative Arts course, Environmental Art. In addition, I am the technology assistant, volleyball instructor and the 6th grade advisor to the Hall of Astronomy (Hypatia). I feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to work at CSS and to be surrounded by so many creative and inspiring colleagues and students!