News

During the 15 weeks between spring and fall semester, RIT students are finding ways to embrace new challenges. Some are taking the stage and performing. Others are winning club championships. For many, summer is a time to get work experience and participate in research projects, traveling abroad, and helping others while pursuing their passions.

For years, Joseph Hill, assistant dean of NTID Faculty Recruitment and Retention and an associate professor in the Department of ASL and Interpreting Education, has studied how the segregation of southern Black Deaf Americans, along with their history and culture, has impacted the linguistics of today’s Black Deaf youth. Hill hopes his research will continue to uncover and preserve Black American Sign Language.

Fifty years ago, Title IX set the stage for change. But the reason why RIT now has more women faculty, administrators, coaches, and exemplary students is that women acted. Prior generations of women invested their careers to make RIT a better version of itself, including winning two transformative grants from the National Science Foundation focused on gender equity.

Eight first-year RIT students have been selected to become the university’s first Disability Leadership Scholars to advocate and to educate about disabilities.

The NSF awarded RIT more than $588,000 over the next five years to further implement and assess a course-based undergraduate research experience based on the Biochemistry Authentic Science Inquiry Laboratory (BASIL) project led by RIT.

RIT’s annual event commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day will feature a keynote address by a faculty member whose work explores the intersections of communication, race, and identity. Katrina Overby, an assistant professor in the School of Communication, will headline the sixth annual Let Freedom Ring.

Plug Power Inc., a leading provider of turnkey hydrogen solutions for the global green hydrogen economy, is partnering with RIT to provide scholarship support to a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in engineering, sustainability, and the sciences. The first Plug Graduate Scholarship was awarded this year to Mamta Choudhary, an industrial and systems engineering MS student from India.

Diversity Inc. talks to dt ogilvie, professor of urban entrepreneurship and economic development, about work opportunities for Black women during the post-slavery Reconstruction time period. (This content requires a subscription to view.)

Andre Hudson, interim dean of the College of Science, has been included in this year’s list of the “50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology.” The 22nd annual list will appear in the December 2022 issue of the Journal of Black Innovation.

WXXI’s “Connections” program features Hanif Rahbari, assistant professor in the Department of Computing Security.

WXXI’s “Connections” program features Owen Gottlieb, assistant professor of interactive games and media.

Tina Cannaday Chapman DaCosta ’04 MS, ’14 MFA is using her parents’ life stories to teach important lessons about diversity, equity, and inclusion. In fall 2022, the director of RIT’s Diversity Theater program released Dear Eleanor, her second short film based on her parents’ lives.