Meet Our Student of the Month: Kyla Vargas

Each month, WhatTheyTh!nk, in partnership with the Print and Graphics Scholarship Foundation (PGSF), profiles a promising student in a graphic communications or related program. The goal is to raise awareness of graphic communications programs, as well as help students like Kyla Vargas get a “leg up” on entering the industry after graduation. 

This month’s Student of the Month is Kyla Vargas, a fourth-year student at the University of Houston majoring in Digital Media. Professor Jaime de Vega, on his nomination form, said of Kyla, “As University of Houston Print Ambassador, Kyla Vargas has played a pivotal role in sparking student interest in print and packaging careers, the first of three pillars of Houston’s Print & Packaging Industry Initiative. Her consistent campus outreach provides a critical peer-to-peer connection to Houston’s print community, which will help grow the print workforce.” Kyla also worked on this program with fellow student Chans Montgomery, whom we will profiling in a future Student of the Month installment.

As with a lot of our Students of the Month, her interest in graphic communication stemmed from an early creative impulse. “What attracted me to graphic arts really was my initial artistic interest in learning using technology to express myself creatively,” said Kyla. “I was first exposed to the Adobe Creative Suite back in high school, so getting my feet wet a little bit in that area of digital media really got me interested in the whole realm of digital media.” Once in college, she realized there was more to explore. “There was not just graphic design, there was also videography, and there were all these other areas of digital media that I could learn about.”

Kyla was born in Berkeley, Calif., and raised in Houston, Tex. The University of Houston was a common destination for local high school grads, her older siblings were alums, and an academic scholarship from the school sealed the deal. It was serendipity that led her to discover print and packaging. “I didn’t realize print and packaging was a career option or even an area within digital media,” she said. “I had learned about it through a Graphic Communications class that I took with Professor Mike Dawson, and when I learned that we could connect digital media with something tangible like print and packaging, I thought it was a really interesting area that I could explore.”

Read the Full Artcle about Kyla Vargas Here

Watch Kyla’s interview with WhatTheyTh!nk Here