More students involved in performing arts are currently enrolled at RIT than ever before. This year’s class includes a record 482 new students who received Performing Arts Scholarships.

People from across the university are helping RIT make substantial progress on the initiatives laid out in the Action Plan for Race and Ethnicity. Launched in July 2021, the plan unveiled an extensive series of initiatives designed to make RIT more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

Nearly 1,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing students supported by RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf help create a welcoming, inclusive, and vibrant environment on campus.

RIT is a place where students with diverse interests come together to grow and thrive. Our students are creating a community where their individuality, creativity, and innovation are always celebrated.

More than 5,000 RIT students each year apply what they are learning in the classroom to meaningful work experiences. Meet four students who recently took time between classes to work in their fields.

Increases in collaborative projects and inclusion in statewide and national economic development initiatives combined for another record year of sponsored research funding at RIT.

RIT is growing its Ph.D. offerings, adding one new program in the fall of 2023 and two in 2024. This fall, Saunders College of Business will offer a Ph.D. in business administration. In 2024, the College of Liberal Arts will introduce a new doctoral degree in cognitive science and the College of Science will launch a Ph.D. in physics.

RIT students are working toward a bachelor’s and master’s degree starting from the first day of classes. This past fall, 740 new first-year students enrolled in RIT’s Combined Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree program, designed for highly focused, goal-oriented incoming students.

As students head to class each day, a new showpiece is rising at the center of RIT’s campus. The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED)—which was first announced in 2017 and funded in part by a $50 million gift from alumnus Austin McChord ’09—is a multi-use complex that will showcase RIT’s technology, the arts, and design. The SHED is on track to open this fall.

A 750-seat music performance theater will be constructed on the RIT campus to offer a venue for musical theater productions. The new building will be the first of two theaters in a performing arts center. The first phase will be an iconic building with more than 40,000 square feet of space, with anticipated completion in 2025.

Major renovations continue for RIT Athletics facilities, which benefit thousands of students. A new artificial turf field, scoreboards, and lighting have been installed at Tiger Stadium. The project is expected to be completed in 2025 with the construction of a stadium complex featuring new seating, locker rooms, concessions, and a press box.

RIT has been expanding its research footprint to accommodate the university’s growing research portfolio. The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED), which opens this fall, is enabling the university to convert 10 existing classrooms, totaling more than 23,000 square feet, into new research space. Another 14,700 square feet of research space opened in January in Brown Hall.

Saunders College of Business has broken ground on the multi-million dollar expansion and renovation project at Max Lowenthal Hall.

RIT opened the doors to its world-class home for cybersecurity in 2020, and it’s making the university one of the best places for cybersecurity education, training, and research.

RIT Dubai’s new campus earned international recognition for its innovative design. Newsweek magazine named RIT Dubai’s Innovation Center to its “Quirkiest College Campuses” list in August.

The crown jewel of RIT’s Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction & Creativity, MAGIC Spell Studios brings together the university’s academic strengths in game design and development, film and animation, and digital media, with a commercialization focus that provides Hollywood-scale virtual production experiences for students and clients.

Programs with RIT’s international campuses are helping to make well-rounded students. Six new scholarships being piloted this year will allow students from RIT’s main campus to travel to RIT Kosovo to explore the origin and resolution of armed conflict, reconstruction, and institution building at the end of wars.

A national institute led in part by RIT marked five years of accelerating the transition to a circular economy in the United States in 2022. The REMADE Institute, founded in 2017 by the U.S. Department of Energy with an initial investment of $140 million, has grown to nearly 160 current members.

The ability to see through body tissue may sound like something from a science fiction movie, but a start-up company in RIT’s Venture Creations business incubator has developed a device that makes this possible.

RIT is building upon its successful history of semiconductor development and research through an expansion to its cleanroom facility with help from New York state.