UTSA, Adobe officially launch Creative Campus partnership

Nov. 22, 2019 — Adobe officials visited UTSA this week to formally welcome the university to its Creative Campus program, a new initiative developed by the multinational software company to promote digital literacy in higher education. UTSA is the first four-year university in Texas to be selected as an Adobe Creative Campus.

“As Texas continues to rise through the ranks as a top market for the tech industry, it’s imperative that students of all majors within the state become digitally literate and fluent early on in their academic careers,” said Jonathan Hammond, director of enterprise sales at Adobe. “Joining the Adobe Creative Campus program is one of the many ways UTSA provides students with the resources to communicate effectively in multimodal ways, collaborate with diverse teams and ultimately achieve a competitive edge as they prepare to enter today’s job market.”

Hammond visited UTSA along with Maria Poulos, education enterprise named-account manager, and Jason Katsoff, senior customer success manager. The Adobe officials met with student, faculty, administrator and staff representatives at an official launch event to discuss the benefits of the partnership.

UTSA is one of 26 universities in the United States that have joined the program, Hammond said. As part of the Adobe Creative Campus program, all UTSA students, faculty and staff have access to Creative Cloud—a collection of more than 20 desktop and mobile applications for photography, design, video, web and more—and can download the suite on any of their devices at work or home.

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⇒ Learn about accessing Adobe Creative Cloud at UTSA.

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“For our students to be successful in tomorrow’s workforce they must be digitally fluent. It’s critical that they have the tools to make sense of data and communicate that meaning to others,” said UTSA President Taylor Eighmy. “Through the Adobe Creative Campus program we’re putting the infrastructure into place to teach our students how to tell those stories. The partnership between UTSA and Adobe is not merely transactional—it’s transformational.”

As part of Adobe Creative Campus, UTSA has initiated an Adobe Student Ambassadors program to promote the program among their peers, led by Marina “Red” Madden, a lecturer in the Department of Communication. For the launch event Madden challenged the student ambassadors to use Adobe Creative Cloud software to create content inspired by the Roadrunner Creed ideal to “support the fearless exploration of dreams and ideas in the advancement of ingenuity, creativity and discovery.”

“It’s important for students to understand, regardless of their major or career goals, they can benefit greatly from having an understanding of how digital media is created, perceived and consumed,” said Madden. “Our inaugural student ambassadors are excited about sharing these powerful storytelling tools with other Roadrunners.”

One of those students is Gabrielle Carvalho, who learned about the program after attending a workshop with Adobe education ambassador Vincent Fu earlier this semester. “I became extremely interested in the program and wanted to get involved,” said Carvalho. “Now I am ready to learn, develop my graphic design skills, share my experience and hopefully inspire other students to be part of this innovative program.”

In addition to promoting digital literacy at individual institutions, Adobe also seeks to facilitate collaboration and thought leadership among faculty and administrators at Adobe Creative Campus schools. As such, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Kimberly Andrews Espy has been invited to speak in December at Adobe’s worldwide sales conference in Las Vegas about UTSA’s motivation for promoting digital literacy on campus.

— Rebecca Luther

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