News by Topic: Diversity

Over the last year, RIT students, alumni, faculty, and staff have worked to give back to the Rochester community by leveraging art and design. From providing creative outlets for young students to making a shelter to protect residents from the weather, RIT community members are dedicated to giving back to the city where they blossomed into the professionals they are today.

Four RIT faculty members are opening up soft matter physics, sometimes known as “squishy physics,” to a new generation of diverse scholars. Moumita Das, Poornima Padmanabhan, Shima Parsa, and Lishibanya Mohapatra are helping RIT make its mark in the field.

RIT will confer a record 69 Ph.D. degrees during commencement May 12, marking a 53 percent increase from last year.

For decades, deaf and hard-of-hearing students attending RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf have been earning associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees. This year, the first three NTID-supported students are on track to earn their doctoral degrees from RIT.

Thousands of visitors at the 2023 Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival got to see what’s on the horizon in the areas of technology, the arts, and design. Festivalgoers traversed RIT’s campus on Saturday, exploring more than 350 exhibits.

A career in community health inspired Maricela Marquez ’18, ’22 MS to grow in her profession as an advocate for Latino patients. For Marquez, this meant advancing her career at Rochester Regional Health by enrolling in RIT’s health systems management Master of Science program.

Spectrum News features Christopher Kurz, professor in the MS in secondary education program, student Ashley Gleason '20 (biomedical sciences), and their ASL Core project.

RIT graduate degree programs are among the best in the nation, according to the U.S. News & World Report annual statistical survey of graduate programs.

A campuswide event will return with a new focus when Together RIT: A Day of Dialogue takes place on Friday, Oct. 20. Students, faculty, staff, and alumni can now submit proposals to present at the second annual Together RIT. The deadline is June 30.

Artificial intelligence, robots, glass blowing, drones, cybersecurity tours, and performing arts are just a sampling of what lies in store for the thousands of visitors expected at this year’s Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 29.

An afternoon featuring 25 student bands or individual artists is set for Sunday, April 16, in two venues at RIT. Called “RIT Unlabeled Music Festival,” the genres represented include electronic dance music, funk, pop, rock, rap, metal, grunge, punk, fusion, and jazz.

Sharon Mason knows that her students will encounter a few zigzags and bumps in their educational journeys. She views those challenges as a good thing.