When Sami Jefferson ’25 chose Valpo, two things made her decision crystal clear: the bright gold of our University colors (matching her favorite color, yellow) and the opportunity to explore her creativity in our digital media arts major.
During her four years here, Valpo illuminated Sami’s path of artistic self-discovery. The digital media arts curriculum expanded her skillset with classes in photography, graphic design, and film, building on her interests in illustration and animation. Unique courses with Professor Benjamin Brobst-Renaud, M.A., MFA, lecturer in communication and visual arts, played an especially important role in her journey.
Sami took three classes with Professor Brobst-Renaud – Ideation, Art and AI, and Making Comics – which each sparked her creativity in new ways. “Professor Ben’s classes were some of the most fun, because they were the ones I had to put the most of myself in,” she says.
As students across majors explore the creative process in Professor Brobst-Renaud’s Ideation course, he encourages experimentation with artificial intelligence tools as part of their brainstorming and open-ended projects that explore their interests. For Sami, she was drawn to the creative potential of using generative AI to play with language. In her final project in her Art and AI course, she used the technology to create her own language, inspired by her studies in Japanese at Valpo.
Artificial intelligence also provided a tool to explore her interest in lost and endangered languages. “There are a lot of lost languages or languages that we’re losing because no one’s speaking them. And AI can be taught how to speak those languages,” she shares. For her project, she asked generative AI to draw inspiration from endangered languages such as Hawaiian and Ainu, native to northern Japan. She leveraged it to create an alphabet and invent new words, giving the tool rules to follow, and her project culminated with a story written in her new form of expression.
Learning about AI through hands-on experiences gave her a new perspective. “I think what surprised me the most was how my opinion on AI changed,” she reflects. “By the end of [the class], I was like, ‘This is really fun.’ I’m not afraid of it anymore.”
Through courses that integrate AI, Professor Brobst-Renaud aims to educate students on harnessing the technology to support their own creativity. “I hope students take away that this is just another resource in the toolbox,” he says. “It’s another tool that they can use when they’re stuck in brainstorming or when ideas aren’t coming. It’s not a substitute for critical thought. It’s a piece of a system.”
For Sami, the unique experiences that Valpo provided shaped her as an artist and opened up new possibilities. She spent the first semester of her senior year studying abroad in Japan, where she hopes to return to further her studies or work overseas.
Sami sees many future possibilities with her Valpo degree. “I’m glad my major doesn’t box me in,” she says. “Because of my digital media arts major, I can work in areas like film, or graphic design, or photography. I have more entryways with my foot in all these areas because of Valpo, my major, and my study abroad experience.”
Discover more about how creativity shines in Valpo’s Department of Communication and Visual Arts, with majors in art, digital media arts, and communication.
