The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are heralded as the "Oscars of the comics industry." This month CCA's MFA in Comics and Writing and Literature faculty member Justin Hall received an Eisner Award nomination for No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics (Fantagraphics Books, 2013), which he edited.

At Stanford University you can learn how to design calm. The course is one of several dozen offered by what Stanford calls its d.school, an eight-year-old program in design thinking. The hybrid discipline—dubbed “the hottest trend in business culture” by Businessweek—is now taught at schools ranging from Parsons to Yale. At California College of the Arts you can get an MBA in Design Strategy, learning how to apply design principles to such seemingly un-designy pursuits as human resources and accounting.

For the third year in a row, California College of the Arts has been named one of the most environmentally responsible colleges in North America, according to The Princeton Review, an education service that helps students select and apply to colleges.

The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges profiles 320 institutions of higher education in the United States and two in Canada that demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities, and career preparation. The free guide is the only comprehensive, annually updated guide its kind.

Kathryn Van Dyke (Painting 1990)

I have worked off and on in my Sausalito studio since 1996. As a painter, light is important to me. In my studio there is adequate daylight, reflected light, sunlight, light from space, light from fog. Large paintings fit in it; the ceilings are high so that they can be easily turned over and moved around. It is well ventilated.

Culture and nature surround the studio. I hear birds and feel the ground shake from trucks on the road. I can feel the weather and hear the city noise.

Photography by Andria Lo