DDI Good News | October 2021
Honors for RIT’s Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
Rochester Institute of Technology is once again, a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award recipient and a Diversity Champion. The 2021 honors come from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. This is the eighth year in a row RIT has received the HEED Award and the seventh year to be named a Diversity Champion.
We are delighted to welcome three new members to the Division of Diversity and Inclusion.
Marie Gillum will join the Office of Faculty Diversity and Recruitment as assistant director on October 18, 2021. She is currently an associate interpreter in the Department of Access Services. Marie is also a preceptor for NTID’s Randleman Program, helping to mentor, recruit and retain BIPOC ASL interpreters. She is expected to complete her master’s degree in Professional Studies with concentrations in HR, diversity education, and Deaf studies from RIT’s School of Individualized Studies this December.
Melodie Velazquez-Soto is the new senior staff assistant in the Office of Faculty Diversity and Recruitment. She is a Keuka College graduate where she majored in Criminal Justice. She has an administrative background in not-for-profit and profit organizations.
Monica Thompson started October 4th as the senior staff assistant in DDI. Her face is a familiar one on the RIT campus. For the last seven years, she has worked in customer service, administrative and financial operations with the Facilities Management team.
Grab some popcorn! Dear Eleanor is the latest film produced by RIT’s Diversity Theater. It is a sequel to Diversity Theater’s first award winning film, Brick by Brick. Filmed in partnership with MAGIC Spell Studios, a majority of the crew are RIT students (current and alumni) with Dallas Calkins as cinematographer. Dear Eleanor was filmed on location at the National War Plane Museum in Geneseo, NY. Tina Chapman DaCosta, director of Diversity Theater, expects a release date of spring 2022. Both films are in use for community building workshops.
Congratulations are in order for Jaden Dominguez, RIT alum HEOP, Orlando Ortiz, Minett Professor Emeritus and Stephanie Paredes, assistant director, Multicultural Programs. They contributed to the newly released Rochester Latinx Agenda 2021. This is a major report on the state of Rochester’s Latino community. It provides background, analysis, and recommendations on 10 different areas such as Housing, Economic Development, the LGBTQi+ Community, and Language Access and Civic Engagement. Many of the recommendations focus on access to resources.