Photo Spotlights

RIT Tiger spirit was felt across the country this weekend as students, alumni, faculty and staff gathered in a variety of places to cheer on the men’s hockey team in the NCAA Tournament. On the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Ind., site of the games, the team was cheered on by its loyal RIT Pep Band and Corner Crew as well as more than 50 alumni from Indiana, Michigan and the Chicago area.

Past and present members of the RIT women’s cross country and track and field squad returned from a 1,400-mile non-stop relay that started in Auburn, Alabama. Dubbed “The Tiger Trail”, the eight-day endeavor will raise funds and awareness for the national Tigers for Tigers (T4T) coalition. The goals of the national Tigers for Tigers coalition are to make a positive impact on the tiger conservation, associate the tiger mascot pride with the tigers of the wild and establish passion for the T4T organization, and create conservation professionals out of student leaders.

More than 40 teams from across the region made their way to RIT’s Gordon Field House for the 2015 FIRST Robotics Finger Lakes Regional Competition. This year’s game, RECYCLE RUSH, saw team alliances stacking and filling recycling totes and scoring points using colorful pool noodles to represent litter.

For the second time in the Division I era, the RIT men’s hockey team will head to the NCAA Tournament. The third-seeded Tigers defeated No. 5 seed Mercyhurst University 5-1 in the Atlantic Hockey Championship at Blue Cross Arena on March 21. The Tigers will face Minnesota State University, the No. 1 overall seed in the 2015 NCAA Division I men’s hockey Midwest Regional, at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Compton Family Arena at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

Ryan Chojnacki, an electrical engineering major, and Peter Lam, a management information systems major, participate in Fusion Fest ’15, hosted by RIT’s Electronic Gaming Society. The video game LAN party raised awareness for video games as a diversionary activity for people with cancer and raised money for cancer organizations. Proceeds and donations benefited Cancer Wellness Connections in Rochester, Colleges Against Cancer and helped support a paid cooperative education position for students to work at Cancer Wellness Connections.

The Charles Arnold Lecture Series presented photographer Eugene Richards March 18. Richards is also a writer and documentary filmmaker who has authored 17 books, the most recent being War is Personal, a documentation in words and pictures of the human consequences of the Iraq war. Here, Richards signed his book for student Brittainy Newman.

Harshita Sood, an environmental services graduate student from Kolkata, India, helped start the RIT FoodShare Program. Part of the program includes the RIT FoodShare Center, which is expected to open April 13 at the Residence Life Riverknoll office at 113 Kimball Drive. The free items will be available for students who may be having trouble paying for food.

RIT President Bill Destler was among those attending the grand opening on March 18 of Studio X, the newest broadcast area for WITR radio. The studio was christened with “Ask Destler,” the first show to originate from the studio immediately after the celebration events.

Bob Duffy ’93 (multidisciplinary studies), president and CEO of the Rochester Business Alliance and former lieutenant governor, delivers remarks inside RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability auditorium on March 17. As part of the Spring 2015 ArchiTALKS Guest Lecture Series sponsored by the Master of Architecture program, Duffy spoke about upcoming opportunities related to economic development in the Rochester area. The lecture is in conjunction with the GIS program’s Urban and Regional Planning course.

The second cohort of graduates of RIT’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship at Saunders College of Business are six local entrepreneurs who have spent the last six months in a customized training program to grow their business. CUE Interim Director Carlos Carballada and CUE Program Manager Ebony Miller (to his right) presented participants with RIT certificates during the ceremony.

Students in RIT’s math club, PiRIT, celebrated Pi Day 2015 on March 13 with a pie baking contest. The campus community was encouraged to help select the winner. The club also calculated a mathematical derivation of pi and hosted a competition for the person who most accurately recited the digits of pi.

Saunders College of Business hosted the 6th annual Power Your Potential Women’s Leadership Conference on March 13 with keynote speaker Kathleen Buse, an RIT alumna from the Kate Gleason College of Engineering. Buse is the founder and CEO of Advancing Women in STEM and currently works at Case Western Reserve University.