Photo Spotlights

Twenty RIT decision makers spent three days and two nights at the RIT Inn & Conference Center, Global Village and Perkins Green apartments for The REAL RIT Challenge, sponsored by Student Government. The challenge was to master campus transportation—learning how to read shuttle bus schedules to arrive on campus on time, and to get to off-campus locations such as Wegmans, Park Point and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. The group gathered on Jan. 19 to receive information packets and have dinner.

Elizabeth Thabet, a first-year student in CIAS, learns about volunteer opportunities at an event hosted by RIT’s Intervarsity Christian Fellowship on Jan. 18.

The RIT American Sign Language and Deaf Studies Community Center opened with a ribbon cutting on Jan. 19. It is a resource for community, national and international outreach activities that enrich and celebrate achievements of the deaf community and fosters interaction among deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing colleagues.

Kim Murray, right, demonstrates a move in his wellness class, kickboxing. RIT’s Center for Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation’s Wellness Program offers numerous classes such as yoga, dance, cardio conditioning, pilates and more.

James Winebrake, a noted transportation and energy policy scholar, has been named dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology. Winebrake will develop and implement the college’s strategic plan and lead RIT’s research and education initiatives in the humanities, social sciences and performing/fine arts.

Judging for the second annual New York Ice Wine Competition took place Jan. 14 at Henry’s restaurant. Here, Abby Holland, a fourth-year food management major, and Tom Small, a fourth-year criminal justice major, prepare for the event, which was coordinated by Lorraine Hems, lecturer, and students in the School of International Hospitality and Service Innovation in RIT’s College of Applied Science and Technology. The New York Ice Wine Festival is Feb. 5 at Casa Larga Vineyard.

RIT history professor Richard Newman stands at the gravesite of famed activist and orator Frederick Douglass in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery. Newman is conducting a workshop series sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities that seeks to better educate K-12 history teachers on the influence of 19th century social reform movements on modern politics, culture and society. The series will include a tour of Mount Hope and an examination of the Douglass papers at the University of Rochester.

Eighth-graders from Fairport’s middle schools visited RIT Jan. 12 to experience a taste of what it’d be like to pursue careers in computing and technology. The students, who are in an all-female technology class as part of Fairport’s single gender class pilot program, were hosted by RIT’s Women in Computing group and Women in Technology group. From left, Allison Mahoney, Emily Davio and Christian Conner experiment with PicoCrickets with Alana Malina, a second-year graduate student in information technology.

Students from RIT’s hospitality, tourism and nutrition management program traveled to RIT Dubai to study the growing tourism industry in the United Arab Emirates. Before they started classes, they took in the sights and activities of the area. Evan Coyne (left) and Traci Earwood, third- and fourth-year tourism students, respectively, took a camel ride, bringing a little bit of RIT to the desert.

RIT students, faculty and staff choreographed and filmed a lip-dub video on Jan. 9 to be shown during FreezeFest, Feb. 4–6. The lip dub was a one-take, lip-sync music video to Survivor’s hit song “Eye of the Tiger.”

A Discipline the University Didn’t Know it Wanted, by Patrick Scanlon, professor of communication, offers readers “A Brief History of the Department of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology.” Scanlon traces the study of communication at RIT back to the late 19th century when communication was treated as “a tool to be handled with skill, as is the pencil, and hammer.” Then, beginning in the mid-1980s, a new degree program in professional and technical communication emerged. Over the course of the next few years, the department added degree programs in advertising and public relations and in journalism, and a graduate degree in communication and media technologies.

Gates Chili High School seniors, from left, Michael Leimberger, Brandon Garbacz and Zachary Goole, discuss a variety of pollution prevention initiatives with Anahita Williamson, director of the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute at RIT. The students conducted a recycling campaign at their school and plan to donate the proceeds to the Pollution Prevention Institute. Williamson met with the group Jan. 6 to target the funds for specific uses.