Institute News

The New York Times talks to Enid Cardinal, senior advisor to the president for strategic planning and sustainability, about RIT's wastewater sampling program to detect coronavirus.

RIT welcomes a record number of first-year students today as classes begin in a semester that will look like no other due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new students were welcomed Tuesday afternoon during an online convocation that featured several speakers, livestreamed without an audience from Ingle Auditorium.

A team of RIT researchers has been working to blast-clean some 360 door handles from buildings across campus to restore the surface copper. Copper has been found to have antibacterial properties that can kill the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.

Alissa De Wit-Paul has been added to the lineup of full-time faculty for the RIT Golisano Institute for Sustainability’s Master of Architecture degree program.

The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP21) has announced its final selections for the 2020-2021 Community Grants Program.

COVID-19 has challenged the university to consider an even more creative academic portfolio with blended, online, split A/B, and flex class options. To prepare for in-person instruction, RIT has upgraded academic buildings and classrooms. And physical distancing and face coverings, required of faculty and students in classrooms, together provide some of the greatest protection against the spread of COVID-19.

RIT is developing an alert system that systematically defines levels of COVID-19 prevalence and transmission risk within our community. Each level will be associated with predetermined actions aimed at reducing risk during the coronavirus pandemic.

RIT is requiring all students, faculty, and staff to monitor their health for COVID-19 symptoms. The new policy will help protect the health and safety of the community at RIT and in the Greater Rochester area during the ongoing pandemic. Starting July 27, the university will launch the RIT Daily Health Screen website and call-in option.

RIT unveiled two plans that outline the actions that the university and its individual community members must take for a safe, productive, and meaningful Fall 2020 semester.

As the RIT community prepares to return to campus this fall, an environment of physical distancing and reduced classroom occupancies has added a new component to the course scheduling process. Throughout the summer, every college has worked to rebuild the fall schedule to accommodate the unique requirements of the fall semester.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, RIT’s Division of Diversity and Inclusion wanted to create a way for faculty and staff to connect with people from different backgrounds despite the limitations that come with physical distancing. In April, they launched the “What’s Your Diversity” program, a weekly storytelling and dialogue hour held via Zoom that allowed RIT faculty and staff to share how diversity impacts their lives.

President David Munson reports on the progress in RIT's preparations to reopen for fall semester.