Welcome to the September edition of the Adobe Higher Education newsletter.
Find practical ideas, upcoming events, and quick tips to help you make the most of Adobe tools in today’s evolving higher education landscape. Please forward this to your colleagues and encourage them to subscribe so they don’t miss a thing.
Empowering Creativity at Loyola University Maryland
H. Jay Dunmore, a faculty member in Loyola University Maryland's Communication and Media program, is helping students turn ideas into impactful digital content using Adobe Express and other Adobe creative tools. From quick video editing and social media design to digital signage, motion graphics, and PDF creation, Adobe Express has become a versatile hub for both teaching and content creation.Jay and his students are also exploring the power of generative AI within Adobe tools. They use AI to create concept visualizations, storyboards, mockups, images, and videos, helping bring ideas to life faster and enabling students to experiment before investing significant time and resources in production.
What stands out most is the impact on student confidence and creativity. Jay describes Adobe Express as a "creative Swiss Army knife" because it removes barriers to creation and helps learners move seamlessly from concept to completion. By providing an accessible starting point, Adobe Express also serves as a gateway for students to develop skills in tools like Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects.
Why it matters: When powerful creative tools are easy to use, students spend less time wrestling with technology and more time developing ideas, telling stories, and building the digital fluency today's workforce demands.
Want to see Jay in action? Check out his session Easily Create Short- Form Video Content from our Adobe Education Institute.
New guide: Driving Success in Business Schools
Employers increasingly expect graduates who can pitch, present, and communicate across formats. Developed in collaboration with business school lecturers across the UK, this quick-start guide helps faculty bring business concepts to life with easy-to-implement multimodal activities and assessments, no digital design or AI skills required.
Purposeful, Sustained, and Iterative: Designing a Digital Learning Fellowship at Central Michigan University
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
8am PT | 10am CT | 11am ET | 4pm BST | 5pm CET
Get an inside look at how Central Michigan University is moving faculty development beyond a single workshop through its Digital Learning & Leadership Faculty Fellows program. This year-long, cross-disciplinary initiative helps faculty explore, implement, and reflect on creative, technology-enriched teaching.
Leave with practical frameworks and tangible examples for cultivating a similar community of practice on your own campus.
Can't make it? Register anyway to get access to the recording.
Making Student Thinking Visible: How Weber State University is Solving the Critical Thinking Gap
As AI makes it easier to skip the thinking and jump right to the output, faculty from Weber State University share what they've learned from moving toward formative, multimodal assignments that surface students' reasoning, not just their final products. Watch the recording of this webinar hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Adobe.
Start the semester with assignments students actually want to create.
As faculty put the finishing touches on fall syllabi, Adobe Express Learning Kits make it easier to bring fresh, creative assignments into any course without starting from scratch. Each ready-to-use kit includes customizable templates, prompts, rubrics, and tutorial videos for seven high-impact assignment types, including multimodal reports and essays, career-skills portfolios, infographics, research posters, presentations, explainer videos, and podcasts.
Whether you're refreshing a signature project or trying something new this semester, these kits give you a practical, student-friendly way to build digital fluency, creativity, and communication skills right into your curriculum.
From PDFs to podcasts: Your documents just got a voice.
Ever wish you could listen to that 50-page report instead of reading it? The new Generate Podcast feature in Adobe Acrobat is making that possible by turning documents into engaging, conversational audio summaries.
Imagine converting class notes, research papers, project materials, accreditation reports, or committee updates into quick audio summaries. Faculty, staff, and students can stay informed while making the most of their time, whether they're commuting to campus or moving between classes.
Users can personalize the experience by adjusting podcast length, expertise level, and playback speed. Podcasts can even stay up to date automatically within PDF Spaces as documents are added or removed, ensuring the audio reflects the latest content.
Bottom line: Acrobat isn't just helping us read documents anymore. It's helping us listen to them, making information more accessible, flexible, and easier to fit into our day.
Try it out: Upload a PDF to Acrobat and turn it into your next podcast.
Keep edits on brand with AI Assistant.
Attach a brand in the prompt bar to automatically apply its colors, fonts, text, and shapes to your design.
Embed YouTube videos.
Copy a YouTube URL and paste it directly into your file to add playable video content.
Join our Higher Education Faculty Community.
Connect with faculty and staff worldwide who are tackling the same challenges you are. Trade ideas that are actually working. Bring real resources back to your campus. Move faster on the instructional innovation that's hard to build alone.
Join them, and you'll trade what's actually working, gather resources you can bring back to your campus, and move faster on the kind of instructional innovation that's hard to do alone.
Explore the latest features across your favorite Adobe tools.
Useful resources
Newsletter archives
Our new newsletter hub includes our latest edition along with past issues. Add the following link to your institution’s Adobe website to keep everyone up to date.
Adobe North America Higher Education newsletter
Thanks for reading! We’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can improve future editions.
Best regards,
The Adobe North America Higher Education team
