Photo Spotlights

RIT President Bill Destler welcomed the university community back to the 2013-2014 academic year on Aug. 23. He believes the coming year “will be one of the most important in the history of RIT.”

Student Convocation welcomed new students and their families on Aug. 21. The program included remarks from President Bill Destler; Jeremy Haefner, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs; and Heath Boice-Pardee, interim senior vice president for student affairs. Todd Pagano, associate professor and director of Laboratory Science Technology at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, served as keynote speaker.

Steve Ierardi, from Southern California, sported an orange mustache to get into the RIT spirit during Orientation on Aug. 20. His son, Weston, is a first-year student in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences.

RIT community members cheer on incoming freshman students Aug. 21 as they take the Tiger Walk to the Gordon Field House for Convocation for New Students and Families. Todd Pagano, associate professor and director of Laboratory Science Technology in the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and the 2012 U.S. Professor of the Year, delivered the keynote address. Student Government President Paul Darragh, a third-year software engineering major, also spoke.

Incoming students were immersed in the Orange and Brown Experience, one of RIT’s DiscoveRIT Pre-Orientation Programs. The collaborative program ran Aug. 16-19 and taught students about RIT’s history, how to navigate campus as well as an introduction to the American Sign Language alphabet and common signs. Here, from left, Claire Fleming, Andrea Shaver and Andrew Greene practice some signs.

New freshmen arrived at RIT during Move-In Day Aug. 20. RIT President Bill Destler stopped by to lend a hand as new students carried in their belongings for the coming school year.

RIT’s newest group of honors students arrived on campus Aug. 17 for a week of orientation activities including meeting college advocates, enjoying a daylong retreat at YMCA Camp Arrowhead and participating in a campus-wide scavenger hunt. Here, a group located the Schmitt Interfaith Center, a spot on the scavenger hunt list.

Nearly 265 deaf and hard-of-hearing students arrived on campus on Aug. 16 to attend the Summer Vestibule Program, an orientation program for RIT/NTID students.

Thomas A. Nantka and Wilma A. (Tessmann) Nantka met as students at RIT, married in May of 1953, and celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this year.

Construction continues on the Gene Polisseni Center. The arena will be the home of the men’s and women’s hockey teams and is expected to be open for play in Fall 2014.

Fourth-year hospitality major Elizabeth Prater was among the hundreds of employees and volunteers at this year’s PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club in Pittsford, N.Y. Serving as a host in the Wannemaker VIP Tent on the grounds of the country club, she had a chance to meet-and-greet some of the 18,000-plus guests attending the final practice day of the tournament on Aug. 7. Prater, a Fairport resident, and several other students in RIT’s School of International Hospitality and Service Innovation worked at the event as interns or co-ops with the PGA, Oak Hill or Levy’s Restaurants, learning firsthand the coordination and details required to successfully manage a major professional golf tournament. The hospitality students were among several groups from RIT, including alumni, students from ITS and others, helping out with the event.

Shivan Shah, standing at center, read online about the weeklong camp, “From Finches to Fish: The Making of the Fittest,” at RIT and wanted to enroll. The 10th-grader at Clarence High School—and her mom—drove to RIT from Buffalo in time for the 9 a.m. class, offered by the Center for Bioscience Education and Technology Aug. 5-9. Here, instructor Gary Buckert, a science teacher at Pittsford-Sutherland High School, shows Shivan and Angela Rubin, left, a 10th-grader from Rush-Henrietta Senior High School, and Myah Sims, a ninth-grader from Ninth Grade Academy, how to separate and analyze proteins from the muscle tissue of different fish and a chicken. The Center for Bioscience Education and Technology is part of the Institute of Health Sciences and Technology.