News by Topic: Interdisciplinary Studies

Physical distancing and the inability to perform in front of a live audience during the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t stopped the cast and director of SOMNIUM, which premieres online Friday. SOMNIUM features actors and a green screen, which provides a virtual reality space allowing the audience to participate.

Women in the United States and in the United Kingdom fought for voting rights on either side of the Atlantic Ocean in the early 20th century, protesting for suffrage by picketing, going on hunger strikes, and using a savvy poster campaign. RIT students this semester dug into the suffrage movement’s use of graphic arts to design and create a digital exhibit of historical posters from Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library.

Disparities of race, gender, and ethnicity in scholarly publishing will be the focus of a conference hosted by RIT Libraries this Friday. “Scholarship in the 21st century: Race and Gender in Scholarship” will take place from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Oct. 30. Registration is required.

As the 2020 election results come in Nov. 3, civic hackers at RIT want to remind people about the power of technology and how it can be used for good. At RIT’s Election Day Hackathon, students, faculty, staff, and community members will analyze civic problems in the local community, state, and country and propose projects to address them.

RIT’s Behavioral Health program is expanding in new directions with a clinic on campus and federal funding to deliver addiction treatment in rural communities in upstate New York and rural New Hampshire.

Political cartoons from Rochester, N.Y., newspapers from the early 20th century are the focus of a virtual exhibit hosted by RIT Libraries’ Archives Collections and explores three timely topics—voting rights to epidemics and economic uncertainty. The virtual exhibit opening takes place Oct. 7.

Engineering Design Tools, a first-year course, is an example of how RIT’s most applied programs have managed to keep learning as close to hands-on as possible in the age of COVID-19.

RIT is establishing Open@RIT, an initiative dedicated to supporting all kinds of “open work,” including — but not limited to — open source software, open data, open hardware, open educational resources, Creative Commons licensed work, and open research.

A health care approach centered on integrating mind-body well-being in all aspects of traditional medicine is the focus of a new book by Dr. Laurence Sugarman, research professor in RIT’s biomedical sciences program.

As part of a new $20 million National Science Foundation grant, RIT computer science professor Richard Zanibbi is using artificial intelligence to accelerate experimentation in chemistry, including finding more efficient ways to create solar cells.

RIT is joining University of Rochester and others in a National Science Foundation-funded project to learn about the different creative skills that tomorrow’s workforce needs. The study is centered on the idea that intelligent machines are replacing the routine tasks that people do and creative skills will become even more valuable for future workers.

The unexpected transition to remote learning during the spring semester challenged faculty across RIT to experiment, create, and deploy new methods of instruction to ensure student success. As the university gears up for in-person and online classes—or a combination of both—faculty members are applying a wide range of lessons learned from the spring to keep academic momentum moving forward in the fall.