FEATURE
Leveraging Our Geography in an Increasingly Digital World
By Tiffany Harbrecht
What happens when the nation’s most transformative university teams up with a global software company to support digital and creative literacy?
Less than a mile from San José State University stands Adobe’s corporate headquarters. Between them, an important relationship blooms. Silicon Valley’s public university and the pioneering software giant have joined forces in a transformative approach to professional success — grounded in their shared commitment to creativity, collaboration, diversity, equity and inclusion.
The past two years have defined a new era for San José State and Adobe, beginning with SJSU being named an Adobe Creative Campus in 2020 for its emphasis on the innovative teaching of digital literacy skills. SJSU provides access to the company’s Creative Cloud applications at no charge to its students, staff and faculty, equipping the community with powerful creative tools to incorporate into their studies, work and teaching and creating an opportunity to amplify their voices and impact in personal, academic and professional endeavors.
More importantly, this creates a level playing field — especially for underrepresented and first-generation students who may have never had the opportunities or means to work with these types of technologies — to equitably access and develop communication, storytelling and high-demand digital skills that will support their career success in today’s rapidly evolving workplace.
In fall 2021, the university was named the inaugural Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) within Adobe’s minority institution strategy, which is part of its Taking Action Initiative that aims to accelerate representation, growth and advancement for underinvested communities. Since then, Adobe (through the Adobe Foundation) has committed $2 million to SJSU in support of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, mentorship and professional development, faculty research and social justice programming. The support has had an appreciable impact on student achievements and outcomes and faculty development at SJSU.
“SJSU’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is also very important to us, as it's key to achieving our mission of enabling Creativity for All. We look forward to continuing to invest in and strengthening our relationship with the university.”
— Karen Steele
“It’s exciting to partner with companies like Adobe that share a strong commitment to the success of our diverse students as well as the faculty and staff who serve them,” says Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Vincent Del Casino, Jr. “As Silicon Valley’s public university and a Hispanic Serving Institution, the grants we’ve received from the Adobe Foundation support new forms of teaching and learning and educational practices that further close equity gaps for our students — and help them create a sense of belonging at SJSU. As important, we’re integrating lifelong digital and creative literacy skills into their education, which they can apply to any career path they choose.”
“At Adobe, we have always strived to build a company that does the right thing by focusing on people, purpose and community,” says Karen Steele, head of Adobe North America education sales and customer success. “As part of our longstanding commitment to creating greater opportunities for all, we are excited to empower San José State students with essential creative and digital literacy skills to allow them to pursue their career aspirations.
“SJSU’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is also very important to us, as it's key to achieving our mission of enabling Creativity for All. We look forward to continuing to invest in and strengthening our relationship with the university.”
The following are snapshots of the collaboration thus far, though the partnership continues to develop and flourish with new opportunities for SJSU. The most recent example is the addition of dedicated Adobe trainer and instructional designer Raymond Lam, ’21 BFA Digital Media Art, in SJSU’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Lam provides training and one-on-one support to help faculty integrate Adobe tools in their courses to support student success and digital literacy.
SJSU Assistant Professor of Media Design Tina Korani (left) and Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Vincent Del Casino, Jr. (right) were among many campus attendees at an interactive event co-hosted by Adobe Student Ambassadors on the Paseo de César Chávez in October. Photo: Jim Gensheimer.
Faculty Storytelling and Development
To further engage students and prepare them for a technology-centric world, SJSU faculty are implementing creative digital projects in their courses as alternative assessment tools. One example is the Sharing Voices project, a campus-wide podcasting program using Adobe Audition.
In collaboration with Adobe, SJSU’s eCampus and the Center for Faculty Development, faculty were introduced to the concept of podcasts and how they might be integrated into their courses and assignments. Some faculty, as well as Provost Del Casino, have even created their own podcasts. Del Casino’s podcast, The Accidental Geographer, just initiated its third season and is available on all major podcast platforms.
Each year, SJSU also hosts Adobe Digital Literacy Day to highlight faculty projects and showcase best practices for using Adobe’s Creative Cloud in the classroom. In addition, two members of SJSU’s faculty, John Delacruz, associate director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and Tina Korani, assistant professor of media design, are “master teachers” in the Adobe Education Leader program. They were nominated for their forward-looking implementation of digital technologies in their teaching — and are two of only three Adobe Education Leaders in the entire CSU system.
Support from Adobe has also helped to develop a Hispanic Service Institute on campus that builds upon the work of the Chicanx/Latinx Student Success Center or “El Centro.” The institute fosters faculty development, helping them create and implement pedagogies and curricula that connect digital literacy and ethnic studies. Magdalena Barrera, vice provost for faculty success and professor of Chicana and Chicano studies, described the institute as “built on a holistic understanding of the experiences, strengths and needs of the Latinx/a/o students, families and communities whom we serve, enabling SJSU to recognize the powerful ways in which students’ campus and home lives are intertwined and inform each other.”
Adobe’s grant has also helped SJSU expand faculty professional development in a three-year Digital Counter-Storytelling Faculty Learning Community initiative in which faculty leaders collaboratively design assignments that enable underrepresented students to connect their lived experiences to course content.
Counter-storytelling is an intentional technique to elevate marginalized voices and disrupt mainstream narratives about historically underserved communities. SJSU faculty engaged the technique with students, helping them develop leadership and career readiness and learn how to positively reframe, record and share their stories with others. The process allows students to produce tangible assets to leverage in their careers and lives, while supporting a real need for belonging, community and social justice.
HonorsX: Solving Problems for Tomorrow’s World
SJSU’s HonorsX program, launched last summer, is an interdisciplinary studies minor for rising juniors and transfer students from all fields of study. Working collaboratively with peers from diverse majors and faculty across disciplines, students tackle complex problems that impact their communities, humanity and the world in meaningful ways. The secret sauce is a rotating, relevant student-chosen theme that focuses on the intersection of equity and sustainability, aligned with the university’s commitment to social justice.
HonorsX is far from a typical honors program; it was designed to engage historically underrepresented and first-generation students who reflect SJSU’s rich diversity. Students dive in during the summer before their junior year with a three-week course that includes a four-day stay in campus dorms. This helps them connect from the get-go with their cohort of HonorsX teammates. Thanks to support from Adobe, all HonorsX students receive a full scholarship for the summer course.
This year’s theme was Developing Sustainable Societies, and the six inaugural teams — 22 students across 14 majors — researched topics ranging from the disposal of plastic in landfills and bottleless water coolers to recycling beach trash. They will use integrative approaches to problem solving and storytelling while developing digital and design skills, and pull it all together into a final project reflecting their unique perspectives. HonorsX students also had access to workshops where they could learn software tools and tricks from SJSU’s Adobe student ambassadors and Adobe education leaders, including Delacruz.
According to HonorsX Program Director Ruma Chopra, the support from Adobe for HonorsX allowed the program to provide students the opportunity to apply for a $500 grant for research or go to a conference. The Adobe funding also enabled HonorsX to host students’ final presentations, which will be open to the public, at the Hammer Theatre in May.
“Adobe helped HonorsX students to communicate their expertise by building their storytelling and digital skills. Creating an e-portfolio with links that point to their many projects will transform their opportunities and future careers,” said Chopra. “This will be a real value to them long after HonorsX.”
Hear from the inaugural HonorsX cohort about how the interdisciplinary honors program is providing a unique experience to impact the world in a meaningful way.
Beyond Sparta, led by Tobruk Blaine, offers specialized micro internships for student-athletes. Photo courtesy of SJSU Athletics.
Student-Athlete Micro Internships
Beyond Sparta is a comprehensive career readiness program dedicated to SJSU student-athletes. (Read more about the impact of Beyond Sparta in “Beyond the Shakeout.”) As part of Beyond Sparta, student-athletes are able to apply for Adobe’s Student Athlete Micro Internship (SAMI) program, piloted at SJSU in 2021. Adobe expanded its program in 2022 and included two additional minority-serving institutions, Winston-Salem State University and Bowie State University.
Tobruk Blaine, assistant athletic director for student-athlete development and Beyond Sparta program coordinator, is the conduit for it all. She works with Adobe and SJSU athletic coaches on the logistics, such as time frames and how the roles best meet the needs of the students. When students apply, she reviews their resumes and helps them navigate the process.
Blaine explains that athletes are often left without the benefit of having an internship experience during college because of their schedules — between training, practice, games and keeping up with their studies, there is not enough time. She says athletes possess a particular skill set to offer companies, including being coachable, taking and improving from criticism, benchmarking and goal setting, group communication and teamwork: “The biggest skill is just being a leader, because they lead every day in what they do.”
SAMI is structured as an eight-week program, 25 hours and five days per week. Adobe interviews the students, and based on their interests and strengths, places them in the departments in which they believe they will thrive. They get hands-on experience with the global tech company and its culture, including mentorship, professional development, training and networking opportunities. The internships are all virtual, providing additional flexibility for student-athletes’ schedules.
Student-athletes from SJSU’s football and women’s soccer teams participated in SAMI in summer 2022 and several of them will be graduating in May with full-time job offers with the company. Adobe has since expanded the internship program, so Blaine is hopeful that SJSU will get more student-athletes from Beyond Sparta in SAMI this summer. “[The program] is changing the way these young people think about themselves, their ability to be confident, and who they are as more than an athlete,” she says.
Activating Students for Others and Themselves
SJSU provides an important pipeline of talent for Adobe technical and sales teams, among other roles, and some of that is fostered by its student ambassador program. SJSU has 25 Adobe Student Ambassadors — the most of any higher education campus Adobe works with — who teach workshops to their fellow Spartans, serve as social media influencers and collaborate with Adobe’s Community Engagement team.
SJSU Adobe Student Ambassador Lyric Kochendorfer, ’25 Film, led workshops with HonorsX students, helping them to learn and implement Adobe tools in their research and for their final projects. “It's always nice to do something and see the direct impact on your peers,” she says. “I was able to give them the help [learning to use technology and software] that I didn't necessarily get — help they maybe didn't know they needed.”
Students are also helping SJSU lead efforts among eight participating CSU campuses to support the largest pilot to date of Adobe’s Frame.io. The software serves as an innovative tool for students to share media and track collaborative feedback. According to Courtney Miller, Adobe’s senior strategic customer success manager for the California State University system, “The goal is to learn how students can use Frame.io as a collaborative tool across disciplines, and to prove value to the [CSU system] and other education customers.”
In addition, SJSU Braven student “fellows” partner with Adobe employees every year to receive mentorship, career development and leadership knowledge. As the founding university partner of the nonprofit Braven, it is another touch point in which both institutions are working collaboratively to empower first-generation, underrepresented and under-resourced students who have not had the benefit of affluent circumstances to support their education.
Student ambassador Monica Shannon, ’25 Advertising, enjoys the collaboration afforded to SJSU students through using Adobe products. “I think this experience will connect me with the right kind of network of creatives,” she says. “It’ll help me in the future with gaining collaborative and leadership skills.”
(Right) SJSU Adobe Student Ambassador Lyric Kochendorfer at the Adobe Student Ambassadors on the Paseo de César Chávez in October. Photo: Jim Gensheimer.
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