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Professional Studies MS

CEOs, Chief Financial Officers, and Chief Technology Officers are among the 12 RIT alumni honored with Distinguished Alumni Awards for the 2024-2025 year.

Twelve RIT alumni have been honored with Distinguished Alumni Awards for the 2023-2024 year. The Distinguished Alumni Awards are presented annually by each of RIT’s nine colleges, the School of Individualized Study, and the RIT Graduate School to alumni who have performed at the highest levels of their profession or who have contributed to the advancement and leadership of civic, philanthropic, or service organizations.

Students in RIT’s Multidisciplinary Senior Design (MSD) program worked on The Overcomer, a patented device being used by children and adults with mobility challenges to play sports at the Special Olympics and in schools, nursing care facilities, sports leagues, and homes around the world.

Thousands of RIT students are graduating this week with majors including engineering, computer science, cybersecurity, business, and fine arts. But more than 250 graduates are also receiving customized bachelor’s and master’s degrees from RIT’s School of Individualized Study, which allows students a flexible education pathway of their choosing.

The Center on Access Technology at NTID, in partnership with Google and Georgia Institute of Technology, is creating PopSign, a mobile app that will enable parents of deaf children to more easily learn American Sign Language.

RIT's annual Veterans Day Breakfast returns this year featuring a keynote address by RIT alumnus, adjunct faculty member, and active member of the military, Thomas L. Peeples ’94, ’03 MS.

Tyler Pugeda, a master’s student with concentrations in cell biology and healthcare entrepreneurship in RIT’s School of Individualized Study, will travel to Germany in September to fulfill the requirements of his Fulbright Research award. Using post-mortem human brains afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, Pugeda will investigate treatments to slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Unique Fair-Smith and Tymoni Correa-Buntley are the first two recipients of the Mark and Maureen Davitt Graduate Education Endowed Scholarship and are both set to graduate with their master’s degrees this weekend.

RIT is teaming up with the nonprofit online learning platform edX to create a universal pathway to credit, making it easier and less expensive for people to earn a master’s degree. With this new model, RIT is the first university to enable edX learners to apply any of the 63 MicroMasters programs toward a Master of Science—specifically, RIT’s customizable professional studies master’s degree program.

The Khaleej Times features JayShaud Potter '19 (applied arts and sciences), a professional studies and MBA student, and his Smart Pillow invention.

Mona Harrington ’08 MS (professional studies) was appointed executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in June 2020. As leader of the EAC, Harrington has revamped the agency and spearheaded a series of initiatives to ensure COVID-19 and cybersecurity challenges don’t harm the election process.

The Mark and Maureen Davitt Graduate Education Endowed Scholarship was established with a $500,000 gift to RIT by Mark and Maureen Davitt to help graduates from the Rochester City School District pursue advanced degrees.