“My passion is now my career and it started here, at West Liberty University.”

Jesse Lenz who earned a Bachelor of Science degree in graphic design in 2010, has created collage illustrations for a variety of periodicals, including Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, Popular Mechanics, The New York Times, Readers’ Digest and dozens of other publications. His reputation as an illustrator continues to grow and he is responsible for creating the cover image for Newsweek magazine’s 10th anniversary coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Jesse, a resident of Middlebourne, W.Va., lives by a credo that he learned in Professor Bob Villamagna’s class, “inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work.”