Transforming RIT by inspiring imaginations

For six years—even amidst the global pandemic—the RIT community kept busy brainstorming, conceptualizing, designing, problem solving, collaborating, and building a new place where ideas, creativity, and innovation can come to life.

We engineered the largest construction project in our history with one timeframe in mind: fall 2023. Our time has arrived! The doors are open to the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED), where we are emblematically and demonstratively unlocking creativity.

The SHED showcases technology, the arts, and design at RIT. This creative hub includes the Brooks H. Bower Maker Showcase, the Sklarsky Glass Box Theater, and music and dance studios.

The SHED’s focus on hands-on learning extends to 27 new classrooms—five extra-large learning spaces designed for active learning and 22 regular-sized flexible classrooms in the totally renovated Wallace Library.

We are transforming RIT by building places and spaces for thinkers, creators, and makers unlike any other university in the nation. Big ideas can turn into reality. And that message is energizing our students.

From morning classes into evening extracurriculars, the SHED is the new heartbeat of the campus. I am confident that incredible things will be produced and invented in the SHED. And some of those things will form the basis for student start-up companies.

RIT is more than about taking five courses each semester and working as hard as you can to get A’s. The SHED is allowing our students to think laterally, to be creative, and to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to innovate and solve real problems.

RIT is a university where engineers and scientists pursue the performing arts, techies tackle the humanities, and artists learn to code. To further facilitate this, we began construction this fall on a 750-seat music performance theater designed primarily for musical theater productions at RIT. This venue, designed by renowned Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan, is expected to open in 2025.

I envision that the entire RIT community will have an opportunity to engage with this “making” facility—be it as an actor, singer, dancer; or building sets, programming displays, designing costumes; or working on sound, lighting, or stage crew.

We are always on to the next big thing to inspire creativity, collaboration, and expression, which ultimately leads to innovation.

Yours in Tiger pride,

David C. Munson Jr., President