News by Topic: Global Engagement

Donathan Brown, assistant provost and assistant vice president for faculty diversity and recruitment, is one of 13 scholars nationwide selected to serve in the latest cohort of the Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassadors program. Brown will serve a two-year stint in the program designed to increase the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program’s visibility nationwide and expand the diversity of future participants.

RIT Kosovo’s Board of Trustees announced the appointment of Kamal Shahrabi as RIT Kosovo’s new president on Monday, June 1. Shahrabi has served as the dean of faculty since 2018, as an interim president since 2019, and will assume RIT Kosovo’s top post on July 1.

Mohammed Mostajo-Radji ’11 (biotechnology) was appointed as Bolivia’s first ambassador for science, technology and innovation in February. He is typically based out of Silicon Valley, helping to encourage technology investment in Bolivia. But on March 19 he flew back home at the request of Bolivia’s interim president, Jeanine Áñez, to help coordinate his country’s efforts to combat COVID-19’s spread.

Victoria Maung ’20 MFA (medical illustration) is capping her college career with a Fulbright grant that will give her an international experience and a connection to her Southeast Asian roots. With the help of RIT Global, Maung, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to teach high school in Malaysia.

RIT is among 15 colleges and universities that have joined the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN), a program of the think-tank New America. The network unites colleges and universities committed to building the field of public interest technology and growing a new generation of civic-minded technologists.

Students on RIT’s international campuses in Dubai, Kosovo and Croatia became united during this time of social distancing for an online Global Campus Session, organized by the Student Government presidents of each campus.

RIT is leading an effort involving local companies and healthcare experts to produce a prototype ventilator designed to help meet the continuing surge of respiratory cases as a result of the coronavirus.

In the past four years, fourth-year international business student Ioana Ifrim has studied at three different RIT campuses around the world. She has been a student at RIT Dubai, RIT Croatia in Zagreb and the RIT campus in Rochester.

Patricia Wright, a world-renowned conservationist, will give a talk, “Building Forests and Saving Lemurs with Technology in Madagascar,” on Feb. 27 at RIT. Wright has long been a pioneer in using new technologies to solve conservation problems, and partnerships with RIT, the Seneca Park Zoo Society and others will advance these efforts further.

Tourism has surged in Croatia in recent years, bringing with it direct economic benefits but also challenging the preservation of the natural systems that make the Adriatic Coast region so attractive to visitors. Callie Babbitt, an associate professor in RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability, is using a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to study sustainable solutions addressing the growing challenge of food waste management along Croatia’s Adriatic Coast.

The Global Opportunities (GO) grant, a partnership between RIT’s College of Liberal Arts and RIT Global, is the latest incentive program to encourage students to experience learning in other countries.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 31: A multidisciplinary contingent from RIT is creating design solutions to improve the quality of medical care and education in Central America. Mary Golden, interior design program chair and director of RIT Hope for Honduras, speaks with Christian Perry, a healthcare designer and co-founder of Little Angels of Honduras, about important initiatives to help reduce infant mortality in that region.