As the Director of Sustainability at Carleton College since 2022, Sarah Fortner guides and supports the Sustainable Futures Framework, Carleton’s shared vision for advancing sustainability and environmental justice through education, operations, and partnering to expand solutions especially in our community. This includes supporting cross organizational strategy and implementation with faculty, staff, students, and partners. She is especially eager to build climate literacy and to support collective action and problem-solving.
Sarah brings two decades of experience in research, education, and community engagement focused on engaging undergraduates in climate literacy and climate and environmental justice solutions. She served as the former Director of Environmental Science at Wittenberg University. From Wittenberg, Sarah deepened engagement to advance evidence-based sustainability education with the grant funded Science Education Resource Center at Carleton. She has led and collaborated on grants, publications, and public scholarship advancing education and action from agencies with funding from NSF, USDA, state funding, and foundations.
Sarah networks and supports leadership in broader climate education and action. This currently includes: serving on the pilot cohort shaping the Carnegie Elective Classification in Sustainability, steering committee for the Upper Midwest Association of Campus Sustainability, and serving as the vice chair of the Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). She also serves on the Academic Council and faculty for the Juneau Icefield Research Program. Sarah holds a bachelor’s degree in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s and doctoral degree in Earth Sciences from The Ohio State University. She completed interdisciplinary graduate work on the geochemistry of glacial systems in affiliation with the McMurdo Long Term Ecological Research Program and the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.
At Carleton since 2021.
