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School of Interactive Games and Media

With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, Dartmouth College student Clara Pakman decided to take a “gap year” and focus on experiential learning. This fall, her COVID gap year led her to RIT, for a unique course that she had always wanted to take.

As the 2020 election results come in Nov. 3, civic hackers at RIT want to remind people about the power of technology and how it can be used for good. At RIT’s Election Day Hackathon, students, faculty, staff, and community members will analyze civic problems in the local community, state, and country and propose projects to address them.

WROC-TV talks to students taking part in an international game design and development competition to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic and flatten the curve.

A class of RIT students is taking part in an international game design and development competition to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic and flatten the curve.

While many college athletics are on a timeout during the pandemic, esports at RIT are plugged in and fully operational. This semester, RIT Esports has student groups playing 15 different competitive games, along with four teams to support esports operations. As teams begin their fall leagues, students are finding different ways to practice and scrimmage in a socially distanced manner.

Despite restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students at RIT are still finding ways to participate in hundreds of clubs and organizations this semester, including dancing, designing games, and even skydiving.

Professionals interested in learning how to use Unreal Engine to create interactive 3D can now do it online with RIT’s Unreal Engine Foundations Professional Certificate program on edX.

RIT is establishing Open@RIT, an initiative dedicated to supporting all kinds of “open work,” including — but not limited to — open source software, open data, open hardware, open educational resources, Creative Commons licensed work, and open research.

Niantic has donated $400,000 to create a new research lab at RIT that’s focused on location-based games. In the Niantic x RIT Geo Games and Media Research Lab, researchers will work to better understand how people interact with location-based games and how they can be used for good.

ArcWatch features two projects at RIT that teach disaster management and resilience skills.

RIT is again considered one of the nation’s best universities for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education-services company features RIT in the just-published 2021 edition of its annual book The Best 386 Colleges.

Students from the states on New York’s travel advisory list can self-quarantine through independent housing, hotel arrangements, or through a friend or relative. Another option is participating in RIT’s university-sponsored quarantine at area hotels, which begins Aug. 12. First-year student Iain Roach traveled from Alaska to Canandaigua, N.Y., before he can move onto campus on Aug. 15.