Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education News

Faculty in RIT’s Modern Languages and Cultures department received an International Research and Studies grant from the U.S. Department of Education to fund the development of new materials and curricula for Chinese, Italian, and Spanish courses that focus on STEAM. Associate Professor Zhong Chen, Principal Lecturer Elisabetta D’Amanda, and Department Chair Sara Armengot will spend the next three years developing, testing, and implementing the new materials in the classroom.

The Office of Veteran Student Success was created to help veterans and their families navigate the paperwork, finances, and social adjustments that come with college.

The College of Art and Design welcomed 226 young artists to campus for its National Portfolio Day event, where prospective students met one-on-one with faculty about their artwork and different programs.

The Writing Center and the Expressive Communication Center (ECC) provide peer consultations to help students gain confidence in writing and speaking. The Writing Center is housed in the University Writing Program within the School of Individualized Study, and the ECC is part of the School of Communication in the College of Liberal Arts.

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.

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.

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.

“Developing strengths in [worldbuilding] can help many types of professionals become better at what they do. Clearly, game designers, animators, and creative storytellers can benefit, but engineers, technologists, scientists, sociologists, and health care innovators, for example, can also because the process of envisioning and creating a world and all of its interactions can help test out ideas and inform solutions,” said Associate Professor (English) Trent Hergenrader, Ph.D., who will lead the new Center for Worldbuilding and Storytelling.

Rebekah Walker, a science, technology, and public policy master’s student and RIT staff member, traveled to Africa to research with the Rwandan ministry in charge of emergency management.

Essay written by Evan Selinger, professor of philosophy, published by The Boston Globe. (This content requires a subscription to view.)

Natali Valdez, assistant professor at Purdue University and Presidential Fellow at Yale University, will visit RIT to share her research on social and political factors surrounding maternal medical policy as the featured speaker for the 2023 Eugene H. Fram Signature Lecture in Critical Thinking.

Earlier this month, an interdisciplinary group of RIT alumni, academics, researchers, and public policy professionals met to discuss ethical and social issues related to emerging technology and its application during a day-long session sponsored and organized by The Liberty Fund and directed by RIT’s College of Liberal Arts Associate Dean Lauren Hall, Ph.D.