Jennifer Hackett 

Vanderbilt University Recycling Coordinator
Hometown: Nashville, TN

For Hackett, being named recycling coordinator for Vanderbilt is more than just the latest stop on a career path; recycling is a large part of her life’s work. The Nashville native recalls attending her first Earth Day celebration at Riverfront Park as a teenager.

“I was given some recycling facts about how many aluminum cans it would take to power X-amount of electricity, how if you recycle a certain number of newspapers you can save a certain number of trees, and it just ‘clicked.’ It made so much sense to me,” Hackett said. “Suddenly, this was something that I could do and it was easy.”

As an undergraduate at Ohio’s University of Dayton, Hackett became an advocate for recycling efforts within her college dorm. Following graduation, she spent a year volunteering with AmeriCorps and was charged with establishing a recycling program for the Dayton Metro parks system. 

But Hackett’s burgeoning interest in recycling took on new meaning as a Vanderbilt Divinity School student in the late ’90s. “I took (now emerita professor) Sallie McFague’s ‘Ecological Theology’ class, and we discussed ecology and preservation of green spaces in a very spiritual way – a really comprehensive, broader understanding of what the Earth and the people who live upon its relationship came to be.” As a final project, Hackett proposed establishing a recycling program for the divinity school that would put class discussion into practice. The program is still going today. 

As part of her divinity education, Hackett elected to take “The Management of Environmental Issues” at the Owen School and audited an environmental law class to become better versed in the subject, before graduating with a master’s of divinity degree in 2000.

After pursuing other career interests for several years, including a two-year stint at the Nashville YWCA working with women surviving domestic violence and serving as associate director of the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center at Vanderbilt from 2002 to 2006, Hackett is happy to again be focusing on her early passion.

“I’m really excited to put all of my interests together, and having done the logistical leg work for the last several months, it’s great to finally be making things happen,” she said.

Part of Hackett’s job will be educating departments, offices and student groups on what materials can be recycled through Vanderbilt’s program, because her assessment found that many were operating on outdated and conflicting information. She also plans to be a hub of information on everything from where employees working in non-Vanderbilt-owned buildings can do their recycling to how employees may utilize the university’s programs for recycling special materials, such as compact fluorescent light bulbs, ink cartridges, computers and computer monitors. Much of that information is already gathered on SustainVU (www.vanderbilt.edu/sustainvu), and Hackett will be updating the site’s recycling section frequently.