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School of Interactive Games and Media

NASA’s Artemis program plans to return humans to the moon by 2025. However, in a new game developed by RIT faculty and students, people can use virtual reality to return even sooner.

In 2001, the dot-com bubble was bursting and investors had lost confidence in internet companies. Twenty years later, data has become a new currency, and people can access just about anything from their smartphones. Throughout all these changes, Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences has evolved into the largest college at RIT, with more than 4,600 students this year. Since its creation 20 years ago, GCCIS has awarded more than 14,000 degrees—in a growing number of computing disciplines.

While processing a box of donated items, Kirsten Feigel ’15 (museum studies), a cataloguer for Strong National Museum of Play, came across a rare piece of video game history—a demo of Super Mario Bros. 3 that was created in 1990 by id Software in an attempt to persuade Nintendo to partner with them to develop a version of the game for PC computers.

Early childhood development professionals often face challenges when teaching deaf and hard-of-hearing youth to read. A new project spearheaded by NTID is hoping to effectively bring literacy education to deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji.

RIT ranked No. 6 on the 2021 Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) College Rankings from Animation Career Review. RIT also ranked No. 3 on the east coast and No. 5 among private schools.

W. Michelle Harris, an associate professor in RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media, has had her piece In Their Wake, an interactive digital memorial to the forgotten Black people who developed Rochester, selected for the 67th Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition, the region’s longest-running juried exhibition. Harris is one of 28 members of the RIT community who had pieces selected for the exhibition.

RIT is 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 2022 edition of its book The Best 387 Colleges. RIT was also listed fourth in the Top 50 Game Design: Undergraduate category.

Designers from various College of Art and Design programs, as well as RIT developers, created projects that were recognized in the biennial MODE Fest.

Two video games affiliated with RIT won awards at the 2021 Game Developers Conference virtual event in July.

Anne Haake is stepping down as dean of RIT’s Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences (GCCIS) at the end of the 2021-2022 academic year. She plans to join the faculty following a sabbatical to refresh her research.

RIT faculty-researchers will develop a game-design training system that could help astronauts maintain balance, motor skills, and other cognitive functions while in space. NASA, in partnership with the National Space Grant Foundation, has selected six university teams, including RIT, to develop innovative design ideas that will help NASA advance and execute its Moon to Mars exploration objectives.

WROC-TV talks to Stephen Jacobs, professor of interactive games and media, about the inductees into the Video Game Hall of Fame.