News

The inaugural production in the newest building on the RIT campus, AstroDance II: Across the Universe, premieres Dec. 1 to 3, featuring a variety of dance, aerial and circus arts, and augmented reality, which will be presented in the new state-of-the-art Sklarsky Glass Box Theater.

This year, the K-12 University Center at Rochester Institute of Technology made its mark at Maker Faire Rochester – a gathering held annually to provide individuals with an outlet to display the work they do through hobbies, experiments and projects, with engineers, artists, scientists and various other crafters. Celebrating its first event in 2014, the event included more than 200 exhibitors and an estimated 7,200 attendees, including representatives from RIT K-12 programs, such as AEOP Apprenticeships and Fellowships, and STEP.

The low-cost multispectral imaging system MISHA, or the Multispectral Imaging System for Historical Artifacts, was developed by RIT experts to uncover object details that aren’t visible to the naked eye.

Dr. Naomi Lee is passionate about involving native youth in science, technology, engineering and math; and to prove there’s a STEM identity and need within the indigenous community. Lee, a Rochester Institute of Technology grad, hosts a program at Northern Arizona University that helps expose STEM innovation and research experiences to underserved students. It's sponsored in part by Army Educational Outreach Program Apprenticeships and Fellowships, which is administered through RIT’s K-12 University Center.

The owl is wise, the lion is brave, and an elephant never forgets—but where do these notions come from? RIT graduate student Chelsea DeMott Wildey and her team have developed the pilot episode of ScienceLore, an educational series about the history and perception of animals as they relate to mythology and lore.

At Burger and Roth junior high schools in the Rush-Henrietta Central School District, about 50 students work daily with staff from the Science and Technology Entry Program – also known as STEP – through Rochester Institute of Technology’s K-12 University Center. Enrichment activities offered are meant to help foster academic growth, and often go beyond the classroom to support students. This school year, STEP Assistant Director Lisa Michalek is hosting weekly workshops with students that provide homework help, feature STEM activities, and highlight various development topics. It’s similar at other schools within the county that the STEP team is embedded in with outreach specialists Meg Brown, Rick King and Dana Storti.

Two RIT students have won Google Ph.D. Fellowships for their work as some of the most promising young academics in the world. Emily Kuang and Allahsera Auguste Tapo—both in the computing and information sciences Ph.D. program—will receive full tuition, a stipend, and Google research mentorship as part of their fellowships for up to three years.

With oversized orange scissors and an orange ribbon, the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) was officially dedicated Thursday, Oct. 12, in the center of the RIT campus. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was part of Brick City Homecoming and Family Weekend, as the Board of Trustees, President’s Roundtable, and many national advisory councils and volunteer groups are on campus for the celebratory weekend.

Essay co-written by Kristoffer Whitney, associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society, and Jolie Crunelle, science, technology, and public policy master's student, published by The Conversation.

Tom Connor, former vice president of creative marketing at Walt Disney Co., has been appointed assistant provost at RIT. In addition, Connor, an alumnus of RIT’s School of Film and Animation, has also been named the Paul and Francena Miller Chair in International Education and will serve as a professor of practice in RIT’s College of Art and Design.

Optics and Photonics News talks to Jennifer Freer, liaison/librarian to the Saunders College of Business, about ethical and copyright issues with ChatGPT.

As part of RIT’s ongoing commitment to academic and cultural exchanges, several cohorts of international students, including those from Ireland, Germany, and Indonesia, visited campus this fall. The visits were spearheaded, in part, by RIT Global, which has developed partnerships with nearly 100 countries.