Elisabeth Drake finds hope–for herself
and the planet–through connections with others. And her greatest source of
optimism is teaching students at MIT.
That’s why, though she is officially retired, Drake is
still involved with Sustainable Energy, an interdisciplinary graduate class at
the Institute. While serving as associate director of the MIT Energy Laboratory
from 1990 to 2000, she became intrigued by the connections between excessive
energy use and environmental problems. To work on this issue, she and
colleagues developed MIT’s first sustainable-energy course.
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Drake began her career as a cryogenic engineer at Arthur
D. Little, where she designed and tested experiments for the Apollo
lunar-surface project and consulted with operators of liquefied-natural-gas
facilities. In the 1970s, she helped start an ADL group in hazardous facilities
risk management and worked as vice president of the company’s practice in
technological risk management.
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Drake left ADL in 1982 to teach at Northeastern University
as the Cabot Professor of Chemical Engineering and chair of the
chemical-engineering department. She also began to struggle with alcoholism.
She returned to ADL in 1986, but two years later she was fired as a result of
her drinking problem and ended up in a halfway house. Living there, she was
able to turn her life around. “I finally learned I needed to stop isolating and
start connecting with others to break my cycle of addiction,” she says.
Fifty years after graduating from MIT, Drake recalls
isolation and stress during her student days. To help foster community, she
helped establish the Women’s Independent Living Group (WILG) more than 30 years
ago and today serves as a board advisor. WILG’s 45 residents live in a
five-story house at 355 Mass. Ave.
“They look out for each other,” says Drake. “It’s very positive.” Drake herself
recently moved to a retirement community in Newton, where she enjoys her cats, gardening,
many friends, and volunteer work–when she’s not at MIT, that is.
Her work today at the Institute involves teaching students
how to increase global energy resources while drastically reducing carbon
footprints through an energy portfolio including solar, wind, biomass, and
nuclear power, as well as carbon sequestration. “Interacting with students has
given me great hope for the future,” she says.
