Photo Spotlights

RIT's alumni relations team prepares to send boxes of Girl Scout Cookies to members of the RIT community who are serving overseas in the military. Recipients include alumni, parents, students, faculty and staff. RIT's Alumni Network partnered with the Girl Scouts of America to make the shipments possible.

Niki Usbay, left, and Dan Solel are two of the three students in RIT’s School of Film and Animation honored with a Silver Telly Award. Usbay, Solel and Sean Dekkers, shot and produced 20 half-hour episodes of The Big Apple Cafe’s Wonderful World of Cooking to air on the WB16 cable television station in Rochester. The Telly Awards, a national competition that recognizes excellence in video and film production, recently honored the students with top honors in its educational category.

Cyber law, copyright and intellectual-property expert and author Lawrence Lessig visited RIT on March 24 for his presentation “Free Culture.” Lessig is also a Stanford University law professor and wrote Free Culture, The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He chairs Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses. See the streaming video of his presentation.

Byron S. J. Weng, distinguished professor at the National Chi-Nan University, in Taiwan (center), and Jack Lee, deputy director of Cultural Center of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, in New York (right), visited RIT for its Career Fair on March 29. They're joined by Ken Hsu, professor of computer engineering, the Infinity Quad.

Sam Gilliam, considered one of the most prominent African-American abstract painters, gave a free lecture at RIT on March 31 about his work from the past four decades. Gilliam talks with Hye Keun Park (right), a fine arts studio major, about one of her watercolor paintings. His lecture was sponsored by RIT’s School of Art and the Commission for Promoting Pluralism.

It was standing room only as an estimated 250 RIT students squeezed into Xerox Auditorium for Boeing Night on March 28. Mark Lyden, recruiting relations manager for Boeing Co., above, presented “Secrets to Interviewing and Salary Negotiations.” Representatives of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, participated in RIT’s annual Career Fair on March 29.

Dean Kamen, inventor, entrepreneur and an advocate for science and technology, will be the keynote speaker at RIT’s 2006 Academic Convocation, part of the university’s 121st Commencement. Kamen will receive an honorary degree during the convocation ceremony, which takes place at 4 p.m. on Friday, May 26, in the Gordon Field House and Activities Center. Kamen last visited RIT in 2005 for FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a technology competition that teams professional engineers with high school students from across the country.

Renowned celebrity photographer Kwaku Alston ’94, returned to his alma mater to offer career advice to students. He was the keynote speaker for the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences’ Point A to Point B Conference held March 31. Alston has photographed portraits of such people as Nelson Mandela, Coretta Scott King, Oprah Winfrey, Clint Eastwood and Lauren Hill. Alston’s talk was sponsored by RIT’s Office of Cooperative Education and Career Services, Alumni Relations, and CIAS.

Three science majors have won the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate award for students interested in pursuing careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering. Roberta DiLeo, Ryan Walvoord and Sarah Denial, above from left to right, are among the 323 sophomores and juniors who were selected from 1,081 nominees this year. Each will receive a $7,500 scholarship covering tuition, fees, books and room and board, and will join an elite group of young scholars.

Foreign Language Week at RIT was marked by several events, including a lecture on Japanese affairs by Jiro Okuyama, director of the Japanese Information Center and deputy consul general at the Consulate General of Japan in New York. Okuyama gave his talk, "Japan: Economic Prospects, its Place in Asia, and the Global Economy," on March 30. The event was sponsored by the department of foreign languages in the College of Liberal Arts.

Students at School 41 in Rochester got a break from their teachers on March 24. Alumni and students from RIT's College of Business partnered with a program designed by Junior Achievement to teach daylong lessons on how education can connect to real-life careers.

Well over 2,100 RIT students and alumni met with a wide range of recruiters at RIT's largest-ever career fair on March 29. Representatives for 170 companies and agencies, including Buffalo-based Fisher-Price, filled the Gordon Field House and Activities Center, surpassing the record of 130 employers who attended a similar event on campus last fall. RIT holds career fairs twice annually.