News by Topic: Deaf Community

Debbie Lesser '19 is a catalyst, facilitating crucial conversations taking place in often highly sensitive situations. As a certified medical interpreter, she assists deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing patients and health care providers in communicating with one another regarding everything from mental health crises to detailed complex medical procedures.

Christine Sun Kim BS ’02 is an artist and is being honored by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Rain Bosworth, an assistant professor and experimental psychologist at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, has created a new research lab that will help scientists learn more about cognition, language, and perception in infants and young children.

WROC-TV interviews Anna McClanahan, a film and animation: production option student, and Gabriel Ponte-Fleary, a film and animation MFA student, about their film, Say Cheese.

Three RIT/NTID alumni, Mia White, Ethan Ettienne, and Otto Kingstedt, and one current student-athlete, Krystyna Miller, will travel to Caxias do Sul, Brazil, to participate in the 24th Summer Deaflympics, May 1-15.

Say Cheese, a pioneering, heartfelt film directed and produced by two RIT students, took home the top prize in the Coca-Cola Refreshing Films program announced during the final night of CinemaCon in Las Vegas late Thursday. The project featured the combined creative efforts of students, faculty, and staff in RIT’s School of Film and Animation and NTID.

The limitations of telecommunication relay services are being addressed with the development of a new program that explores how to make deaf and hard-of-hearing users’ experiences with cellular devices truly equal to those of hearing users.

Many RIT students' experiences as undergraduates have helped them get into top graduate degree programs.

After going virtual for 2021, thousands of people came to the RIT campus on Saturday for an in-person Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival, which featured more than 250 exhibits throughout the campus from more than 1,800 students and faculty.

Three student teams showed what technology, the arts, and design means at RIT. They designed technology to help astronauts keep physically fit in space, incorporated virtual reality to enhance signing and captioning support for the Deaf, and built a modern sculpture of the human body made of computers.

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 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.