SUNY Cortland Athletics

Sarah Child is a former All-America field hockey player at Cortland who has established herself in the science world with her studies of Antarctic glaciers and other remote sensing and data processing work.
 
* The Cooperstown, N.Y., native earned a bachelor’s degree in geographic information systems from Cortland in 2007, a master’s degree in geographic information science from the University of Edinburgh in 2009 and a doctor of philosophy in geology from the University of Kansas in 2019
 
* Four-year starting defender on Cortland’s field hockey team from 2003-06
 
* Played in 75 games, 69 as a starter, and helped lead a defense that allowed only a combined 77 goals over her four seasons
 
* Third team All-American as a junior in 2005, a two-time All-North Atlantic Region selection (2005-06), and a three-time All-State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) honoree (2004-06)
 
* Her teams posted a combined record of 66-7, won four SUNYAC titles, advanced to the NCAA Division III tournament semifinals in 2003, and advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals three straight years from 2004-06
 
* During her senior year the Red Dragons finished 19-1, including an 18-0 mark prior to the NCAA tournament – the first time Cortland posted an unblemished regular-season record (matched once since by the 2009 team)
 
* Four-time SUNYAC academic award winner and four-time NFHCA national academic squad selection
 
* Received Cortland’s Olive C. Fish Award in Geography in the spring of 2006
 
* Currently a research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where her research with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) focuses on multi-decadal changes in glacier dynamics for the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets
 
* She is a co-Principle Investigator for projects awarded federally funded grants to better understand external forces affecting Antarctica and Greenland glacier behavior and subsequent sea level rise
 
* Her research in glaciology has been published in peer-reviewed, international journals as well as presented at several international conferences and meetings
 
* Received the 2016 Jack Dangermond/Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (Esri) Geospatial Technologies Student Award while at the University of Kansas for her work standardizing the state of Kansas’s geological databases and creating an automated template for future geological mapping
 
* 2013 SUNY Cortland Young Alumni of the Year award winner
 
* Special teaching assignments have included: core teaching in the summers of 2013 and 2014 at the all-girls science and math camp TechTrek, run by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to help empower 12 and 13-year-old girls in the STEM fields; and conducting remote sensing of glaciers course at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks’s McCarthy Glacier Summer School in 2022