I grew up in Concord, Massachusetts and studied math and art at Middlebury College before graduating from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry with a BLA. Before heading west, I built houses in Vermont, worked at the University of New Hampshire on campus planning for bicycles, and as a site designer for an architecture firm on Deer Isle, Maine. My practice experience since moving to Manhattan, Kansas includes downtown streetscape design and consulting on horse farms.

After teaching foundational studios and graphics classes for ten years, I fast-tracked through law school at KU on a two-year leave. I passed the bar exam in 1991, then worked at the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and KSU University Attorney’s Office for a year. Since returning to teaching full time, I have conducted courses in natural resources and public lands law; but now continue to focus on foundational design studios, graphics, theory seminars, master’s projects, and a few thesis students. I am also responsible for our primary history and theory course. I enjoy leading an annual field trip to Portland, Oregon and overseeing the internship reporting of returning fifth-year students.

My scholarship focuses on design language, including formal and metaphorical ideas of landscape, conceptual frameworks and critical analysis for design. I have addressed the visual impacts of industrial scale wind turbines in this region of Kansas, and I am interested in the intersections of architecture and landscape architecture. I have experimented with social media in the form of a wiki (a “knowledge base”) for the history course and I maintain an extensive set of web pages in order to introduce students to the literature and key concepts of the profession. My website is at http://faculty.capd.ksu.edu/lcweb/.

I serve on several departmental committees; chairing the departmental lectures and exhibits committee; contributing to the college committees on planning and internships; and being active on the University’s campus master plan update taskforce. I take mentoring junior faculty seriously; and I have served, since 1992, on the Riley County Planning Board. I believe in stewardship and that we should preserve the visual, spatial and ecological integrity of the Flint Hills.