Catherine Lowther

Sustainability has become the focus of my life and grows out of a lifetime of living simply in close relationship with the natural world and seeing the increasing impacts we are having on the earth. I grew up in a family of gardeners and have been growing food organically all my life. I first became involved in student directed learning when I homeschooled my two children K-12 and helped them to design their own studies. I joined the Goddard faculty in 1997 and am grateful to be part of the Goddard community and to work with students in a range of areas informed by my background.

In thirty years of off grid homesteading in Vermont, I learned about sustainable agriculture and local food systems, green building, renewable energy and energy efficiency, ecological economics, climate change, and in general how we can restore our relationship with the earth and build the resilience we need in order to live on the planet we are changing. At Goddard, I developed the proposal for the BA in Sustainability Program based on student interests, I bring speakers like Bill McKibben, Frances Moore Lappe, and Jack Lazor to the college and take students on trips to local farms, and I manage the Goddard weekly sustainability listserv of news and resources. Since its formation in 2007, I have chaired the Goddard sustainability committee as we improve campus energy efficiency and reduce our carbon emissions with a goal of carbon neutrality by 2020. I am a member of the UVM Sustainability Faculty Fellows Program that is working to advance sustainability education.

I was in private practice for twenty years as a therapist with a focus in holistic and vegetarian health counseling, dream analysis, family systems, conflict resolution, trauma and recovery, and bodywork. I use the principles of Chinese medicine and Ayurveda in health counseling, and transpersonal, archetypal, cognitive, systems, and hypnotherapy approaches in therapy. Working with people making major changes in their lives or healing from serious illnesses such as cancer has taught me about the power we have to overcome daunting challenges and take our lives in a new direction. I am also part of a spiritual community that includes daily meditation, yoga, and travel to India for retreats with our spiritual teacher.