Photo Spotlights

Children are among the fans of an interactive landscape installation of flowers, trees and insects created by RIT professor Roberley Bell. Flower Blobs Bloom is one of the inaugural exhibits at the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College. Bell invites her audiences to rest on a flower petal made of astro turf or even create their own garden. Her exhibit is open to the public through March 15. Lorrie Frear, professor of graphic design, designed and painted a wall mural of flowers that accompanies Flower Blobs Bloom.

Professor Joel Kastner and his team discovered a disk of molecules orbiting twin suns in the constellation Sagittarius. Their findings, reported in the December 2008 issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics, suggest that Jupiter-like planets could form around binary star systems.

President Destler took time out to read a story to kindergarten children from Margaret’s House on Dec. 17. No ordinary story, it was a special book produced in collaboration with the kindergarten students and RIT students in the arts and imaging studies program at NTID/RIT. A Curious Friend Visits RIT is the story of Curious George’s walk at RIT and the adventures he had along the way. Many children asked President Destler to sign their copies, making them even more special.

Students return from their holiday break and resume classes on Jan. 5, 2009.

RIT’s Center for Religious Life hosts a “Pasta Night” on the first and third Tuesday of the month as a way to bring the RIT community together. Jeff Hering, director of the Center for Religious Life, says the dinner has become “something of an institution.” The next dinner will be Jan. 20, 2009.

RIT President Bill Destler announced on Dec. 18 that RIT has entered into a strategic alliance with Rochester General Health System. An agreement between the two institutions will include RIT becoming the health system’s official academic affiliate and RGHS becoming the university’s official affiliated medical center. The partnership will add capabilities and provide opportunities for both organizations.

Undergraduate and graduate students from the School for American Crafts are selling their wares at the annual student holiday sale. Approximately 45 students from the four specialties of clay, glass, wood and metals are participating in the two-day event. The sale runs through Thursday, Dec. 18. The items range in price from $10 to $250.

Fifty masterworks from the permanent collection of the Society of Illustrators in New York City will be on display in “An Historical Look at Visual Communication” at RIT’s Bevier Gallery. Here, Al Gore is depicted in an oil on canvas portrait by Roberto Parada. The exhibit runs through Jan. 21, 2009.

RIT’s annual holiday music concert featured performances by ensembles from the RIT Music Program and the RIT Gospel Ensemble on Dec. 13.

President Bill Destler led a delegation of RIT leaders in Japan this week. Pictured here are Destler, Alan Hurwitz, president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf; James DeCaro, director of NTID’s Postsecondary Education Network (PEN) International; Lisa Cauda, RIT vice president for development and alumni relations, and officials from Tsukuba College of Technology/Tianjin Technical College for the Deaf. For more on the visit: www.rit.edu/news.

RIT celebrated the grand opening of its island in the virtual world, Second Life, with a “ribbon cutting” Dec. 10. Guests were invited to explore the island on computer stations set up in the SAU complete with immersive projection systems for 360 degree viewing.

At the 8th annual Electronic Waste Recycling Day, the Student Environmental Action League collected electronic equipment from RIT departments and colleges for recycling or refurbishing. This year, the team anticipates an increase due to the television changeover from analog to digital technology.