Class Notes

Name: Alicia Stenglein

Class Year(s): 2018

Note: Alicia (Wyble) Stenglein ’18 (CLA) and her husband Zack welcomed their first child, a baby girl named Harper, in April 2024!

Submitted on: August 29, 2024

Name: Rick Colson

Class Year(s): 1971

Note: After careers in business, consulting, owning a marketing agency and sustainable real estate development, Rick Colson AAS ’71 is excited to announce the formation of a new not-for-profit art resource in the Pioneer Valley of central Massachusetts. Human Scale Art Space, Inc. is a revolutionary non-profit with both an educational and exhibition mission. Different from most galleries, Human Scale Art Space focuses on educational workshops that expand the definition of “art” to encompass a far wider range of art forms. They hold educational and experiential programs at affordable rates (free for those who can’t afford our suggested contribution), at various venues in the Pioneer Valley. Their fall 2024 programs related to photography include: Workshop: Rock & Roll and Stage Photography - Improve your photography! How to take better performance photos and make high quality images at concerts and stage venues under complex stage lighting. Workshop: Polaroid 20x24 Instant Images - Dedicated to the legendary Polaroid 20x24 camera and the opportunity to make your own 20x24 images. Instructor, John Reuter, October 26th. Workshop: From Personal Trauma to Public Stage - Mining personal experience to use as source material for monologues, storytelling, and solo shows. Ideas transformed into action and silence into voice. Taught by playwright Jay Sefton Workshop: From Analog to Digital and Back - film negative scans, digital negatives, paper negatives, digital positives and digital negatives that can be printed in a darkroom, plus new papers, films and specialty surfaces – vellum, rice paper, translucent papers, backlit mediums, adhesive papers. Workshop: Build a Large Format Camera That Makes Digital Files That Look Like Film! - We will take you through the necessary materials, sourcin everything you need, and we’ll actually build a large format “digital” camera that captures approximately 11×14 inch original images. Same shallow depth of field, same fall off at the edges! Not Photoshop effects. And you will be able to use it to make your own photographs! Workshop: Think Big - Creating large-scale art installations, for indoor and outdoor, private, public and institutional/corporate settings, from ideas to funding to installation. For more information on any of our programs, or suggestions for programs you would like to see offered, please visit www.humanscaleartspace.org.

Submitted on: August 23, 2024

Name: Joshua Myers

Class Year(s): 2010

Note: Joshua Myers MS ’10 (CLA) was named sr. director of development and foundation relations at Barry University in Miami, FL. Myers is responsible for collaborating across the university and with foundations to identify resources that support student success and university initiatives.

Submitted on: August 22, 2024

Name: Dan Szabo

Class Year(s): 1979

Note: Dan Szabo BS ’ 79 retired after 10 years at Apollo Computer and 30 years at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). Dan’s whole career(s), have been motivated and succeeded thanks to a degree from RIT/Computer Engineering (and later studies at RPI and MICA). Dan’s most recent career, 20 years as an academic advisor at MassArt, was so much inspired and informed by Dr. Roy Czernikowski. As an innovator, teacher, mentor, and friend from 1976 until now, Roy has been a constant influence on Dan and family.

Submitted on: June 17, 2024

Name: Jonathan Gippe

Class Year(s): 1996

Note: completed his MBA as a Welch Scholar; and began a new role as Associate Director of Network Construction with Verizon’s Global Network & Technology organization, addressing all Verizon Business Wireline facilities for the Eastern U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Submitted on: May 31, 2024

Name: Lou Iannone

Class Year(s): 90,92

Note: Lou Iannone 92’ FADU has been working as an independent museum exhibit designer/fabricator for the last 20 years as dba ASAGEDesign. His latest projects and clients include a flexible, multipurpose museum for the Centro Culturale Italiano Di Buffalo, a 3-8 year old hands-on space called SENSErie at the Buffalo Museum of Science and a full bar/ green room and shop rebuild for the theatre company, a Road Less Traveled Productions.

Submitted on: May 15, 2024

Name: Michael Saffran

Class Year(s): 2008

Note: Michael Saffran ’08 (CLA) is the editor and a columnist for The WEDGE newspaper (swpc.org/issues), in Rochester, and a part-time DJ and traffic reporter for Stephens Media Group (WRMM-FM, WFKL-FM, WZNE-FM), in Rochester. In 2023, he retired as communication lecturer emeritus from SUNY Geneseo (following 11 years); he now considers himself “semi-retired.”

Submitted on: May 15, 2024

Name: Edgar Praus

Class Year(s): 1971, 1972

Note: I have been photographing in Mississippi for the past 20+ years and now my work is in the permeant collections of both the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Odgen Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. MFA Still Photography

Submitted on: May 15, 2024

Name: Mike Janssen

Class Year(s): 1994

Note: On September 1, 2023, Mike Janssen ’94 (CAST) was promoted to the city manager of the City of Las Vegas. In this role, I function as the CEO and oversee 3800 staff and an annual budget of $2.2B for the 24th largest city in the US. Previously, I was the Executive Director of Infrastructure and Director of Public Works. As a Civil Engineering Technology graduate in 1994, I never could have imagined the career in local government that my RIT degree would help me achieve!

Submitted on: May 10, 2024

Name: Megan Detwiler

Class Year(s): 2019

Note: I was recently honored by the Manufacturing Institute as a recipient of their Emerging Leader award- given to 30 women under 30 who have achieved unique accomplishments at the start of their careers in the manufacturing industry. This recognition underscores my dedication to championing equality and accessibility in semiconductor manufacturing, alongside my unwavering commitment to maintaining exceptional chip quality.

Submitted on: May 6, 2024