Christie-Joy Hartman is Executive Director of JMU's Institute for Stewardship of the Natural World, which pursues an environmentally literate community whose members think critically and act, individually and collectively, as model stewards of the natural world. She is also a Professor in the Integrated Science and Technology Program within the School of Integrated Sciences at JMU. Her scholarly areas of interest are sustainable transportation and sustainability in higher education. Over the last twelve years, her external service has focused on use of Science on a Sphere in outreach with the goal of increasing K-12 students' understanding of Earth as a system and the role of humans in the ecosystem. She is a Certified Energy Manager.  Christie-Joy's interests in energy and environment grew during her undergraduate environmental engineering studies at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo, California. She holds a Ph.D. in Transportation Technology and Policy and an M.S. in Engineering from the University of California, Davis.