SHARON, Pa. — 'What do you want to be when you grow up?’ is a commonly asked question as children progress through K-12. Even as adults, we are often asked to fantasize about what we will be doing in five years, ten, or more. For the students in the English 15: Rhetoric and Composition class at Penn State Shenango, imaginative prompts like these were the basis for the “A Future You” display in the Lecture Hall Art Gallery.
“These questions have a special resonance for first-year college students who are taking the first step on their academic journey,” said Elaine Andrews, assistant director of academic affairs and associate teaching professor of English at Penn State Shenango. “As a former General Education Scholar at Penn State, I worked on other projects involving integrative thinking, a learning objective which involves exploring topics from multi-disciplinary angles.”
Andrews invited students from all sections of the Rhetoric and Composition class to imagine themselves in the future through a creative process involving collage, generative AI and writing.
First, students created self-portrait collages by cutting and pasting newspaper or magazine clippings, stickers, and colored paper. Next, they wrote custom prompts for Microsoft Copilot to produce an AI-generated image of themselves in a future occupation or activity. Once the image was created and incorporated into their collage, students were asked to write a reflection essay on what they learned about themselves through the combination of physical and technological processes of self-discovery.
According to Andrews, returning to basic arts and crafts skills in an English class brought joy to many of the students.
“There is something so therapeutic and accessible about collage. There's not that anxiety about needing to be ‘good’ at it,” Andrews said.
However, Andrews noted that the incorporation of AI was met with some hesitation.
“I underestimated students' ambivalence about AI. Some didn't think the AI image looked like them at all,” said Andrews. “Many wrote about how they preferred the collage as the more accurate form of self-expression.”
Funding for the project was provided by campus leadership at no cost to the students. The display will remain in the Art Gallery through the end of the fall semester.