News Stories

Six graduate programs in Saunders College are now STEM-designated, allowing students the opportunity to engage in technology-based business education.

In virtually every art course and studio environment at RIT, technology is integral to the delivery of content and production of work, whether it’s an “ancient” technology like using a hammer and anvil to forge metal or a computer numerical control plasma table to cut metal forms.

RIT’s strategic plan calls for adding six to 12 new Ph.D. programs and conferring 50 doctoral degrees every year by 2025. The university already reached the latter goal with 51 Ph.D. degrees conferred in the 2020-2021 academic year.

RIT’s MAGIC Center won a MegaGrant from Epic Games, the largest academic grant ever awarded by the industry’s leading game engine developer. The grant allows professors to participate in hands-on training with some of the world’s leading visualization and virtual production experts.

RIT students are already benefitting from a new partnership with Garth Fagan Dance. RIT Performing Arts Scholars Program students are taking master classes and students are working on a semester-long arts management capstone project to deliver suggestions for the internationally known dance company to potentially implement.

Cecilia Alm, an associate professor in RIT’s College of Liberal Arts, was awarded nearly $2 million by the National Science Foundation to lead a team of RIT faculty addressing a lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence research community and gaps in AI curricula.

More than 5,000 RIT students receive experiential learning by completing a co-op each year, often getting a foot in the door to a new career upon graduation. Started in 1912, RIT’s successful co-op program, one of the oldest in the nation, is also a resource for companies wanting skilled RIT students to work for them.

With the help of strong mentors, undergraduate researchers cultivate critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. Conducting research can help students synthesize concepts they learned in their classes to create something new.

Since opening six years ago, RIT’s Battery Prototyping Center has nearly doubled its research and development projects with battery manufacturers from Boston to Silicon Valley. More industries are exploring designs for commercial quality lithium-ion batteries and seeking experts at the center to provide research about the development of different styles of batteries.

For RIT students, the learning doesn’t stop when classes end. In 2021, three student teams took what they’re learning and used it to win national and international competitions in cybersecurity, racing, and design.

As an expert in microfluidic devices—tiny labs able to decipher bioparticles—Blanca Lapizco-Encinas and her research partners uncovered a mystery in how these particles can be better differentiated. As she has moved her own research forward, she is influencing a new generation of scientists to do the same.

The extensive renovation of RIT’s College of Art and Design—with keen focuses on key areas within the internationally recognized School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (SPAS) and School of Film and Animation—made significant strides in 2021.