Last month, Associate Professor of English Lisa West participated in the weeklong Council of Independent Colleges Seminar on Landscape and Identity at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Conn. The seminar focused on art history and the use of visual culture in teaching, with the thematic focus on British and American landscape art of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Council of Independent Colleges is a group of independent liberal arts colleges and universities that organizes events, seminars, and activities to improve leadership on the university level, institutional visibility within communities, faculty development, and the contributions of higher education to society. West has been teaching at Drake for 15 years. She received her doctorate degree from Stanford in English and American Literature.

— Lisa West, Department of English