News by Topic: Creativity And Innovation

A total of 272 exhibits varying from robots, virtual reality games, molten glass demonstrations, scavenger hunts, and performing arts are planned for this year’s Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 23. 

RIT will confer honorary degrees to four outstanding individuals at its 2022 commencement ceremony on May 6: Kimberly Bryant, founder of the nonprofit organization Black Girls CODE; Josephine King Olsen, former director of the Peace Corps; G. Peter Jemison, a member of the Heron clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians; and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine.

The TAD Competition features 22 projects developed by current RIT students that have the potential to enrich many disciplines and expand the boundaries of technology, the arts, and design.

RIT’s Albert J. Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, created to help students invent and problem solve through experiential learning, offers multidisciplinary student teams a stipend for the unique opportunity to examine their businesses and, for some, move them to the next level of development.

After going virtual for 2021, the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival is back in person and virtually, planned from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, on the RIT campus in Henrietta and online at the Imagine RIT website.

Accomplished alumni are returning to campus to discuss the future of technology, art, and design as part of the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival on April 23. The Imagine RIT Futurists Symposium is from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Wegmans Theater, RIT MAGIC Center. It will also be available to watch as a livestream.

Walking into the extra-large classrooms in the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (the SHED) will be a new experience for students and faculty alike when the multi-use complex opens its doors in fall 2023. Faculty can preview the new learning environment during the 2022-2023 academic year by teaching in a large-capacity learning space designed to simulate the new active learning spaces in the SHED.

RIT is creating a School of Performing Arts to offer additional creative opportunities for thousands of students who wish to pursue their passions in performance while majoring in a range of other fields. The new school will be housed within RIT’s College of Liberal Arts beginning July 1, and a national search is underway for a director. 

The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute, headquartered at RIT since 2008, has issued a request for proposals for its Research and Development program from the organization’s partner universities—RIT, Binghamton University, Clarkson University, Cornell University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Leigh Rubin, the syndicated “Rubes” cartoonist and RIT’s “cartoonist-in-residence” returns to the campus in person after a two-year virtual residency due to the pandemic. He’ll be speaking with students and offering a presentation and Q and A session, “Imagination through the eyes of RIT Cartoonist-in-Residence Leigh Rubin,” on April 19.

Circle Optics, a member company of RIT’s Venture Creations technology business incubator, has earned two significant investments totaling $800,000 to further advance its panoramic imaging technology. As a result, the company enters the second quarter with $2.5 million in total contract awards.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 57: In every art course and studio environment at RIT, technology is integral to the delivery of content and production of work. Elizabeth Kronfield, director of the School of Art and School for American Crafts, and Abigail Benkovich, an MFA metals and jewelry design student, discuss how RIT is in a unique position to blur the line between technology and making for students in the College of Art and Design.