From West Lafayette to Washington, D.C.: How Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts Helped One Student Find Her Voice in the Future of AI
Noelia Alvarez, a senior from Evansville, Indiana, is studying Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Philosophy with a minor in Information Studies.
This past summer, she worked remotely as a Junior Fellow in the Library of Congress’s Digital Strategy Directorate. During her fellowship, Noelia joined the Expanding AI Community Engagement Project, taking on one of today’s most pressing questions: How do we build trust, transparency and equity into artificial intelligence?
“AI development is fundamentally academic,” Noelia said. “Its origin rests inside research institutions. I wanted to look inward and study the place where epistemic trust in AI began.”
She utilized an interdisciplinary toolkit shaped during her time at Purdue: historical analysis, digital text analysis, information literacy and ethical reasoning. “Exploring different ways we acquire knowledge,” she said, “is a start to addressing the epistemic risks that AI presents.”
Programs like Boilers Go to D.C. sparked her interest in public policy and connected her with mentors who encouraged her to pursue national-level internships, including an internship with the Bipartisan Policy Center in 2024. It was her work with Purdue’s Institute of Information Literacy (IIL) that strengthened her goal of contributing to conversations about AI.
“My professors in the IIL emphasize student engagement and reflection on our research,” she said. “When I arrived at the Library of Congress, I immediately saw how well those skills translated.”
Her coursework broadened her perspective even more. Philosophy grounded her in ethics, information studies sharpened her research skills and computer science courses built her technical fluency. Even electives like Survey Of Latin Literature shaped the way she thinks about how we preserve and interpret history.
“At Purdue, my mentors have always created a classroom environment where engagement matters,” she said. “That prepared me to ask better questions and to understand why they matter.”
“Although the fellowship lasted only nine weeks,” she added, “I read more on AI and philosophy this summer than ever before. This was my dream internship. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be a professor one day.”