News by Topic: Student Experience

In order to accommodate a surge in students engaged in performing arts, an official groundbreaking was held today for RIT’s new music performance theater, the first major theater project in the Rochester area in decades. The three-story, 40,000-square-foot building will consist of a 750-seat theater primarily to be used for musical theater productions.

Ondrej Frydrych ’97 (MBA) this summer established the Peggy Tirrell Endowed Scholarship for International Students—named after Saunders College’s popular senior associate director of graduate business programs and admissions.

Construction is beginning on the first major theater project in the Rochester area in decades, with a 750-seat music performance theater primarily for musical theater productions at RIT.

For this semester's Metaproject industrial design initiative, students will work with RIT President David Munson to design concepts for a series of outdoor, hands-on museum installations for the Henrietta campus. The outdoor installations will tell the story of RIT in a way that is immersive and engaging to passersby on campus. Each student is tasked with creating a concept for one of the 14 installations. 

A commemoration to rename an RIT residence hall after a granddaughter of abolitionist Frederick Douglass will be held Thursday evening in conjunction with RIT’s annual Lighting the Way ceremony to welcome women and non-binary students to campus.

The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) welcomed students, faculty, and staff into its teaching and learning spaces on Aug. 28. The SHED includes five new active learning classrooms alongside the newly renovated Wallace Library with its 22 new classrooms.

First came COVID-19, then came a massive construction project, and now after more than three-and-half years, RIT’s university library reopens with a new look and a new neighbor.

Turn big dreams into reality. That was just one piece of advice for the newest Rochester Institute of Technology students who attended the New Student Convocation on Aug. 24. The annual event included welcomes from administrators, the new Student Government president, and a lesson in adventure featuring RIT President David Munson.

Nearly one in six of the more than 3,300 first-year and transfer undergraduates this year received a Performing Arts Scholarship from RIT. That brings the total number of scholars to more than 1,800 in the five years since the program began. The program encourages high school students involved in performing arts to continue their passions at RIT.

RIT once again made The Princeton Review Best Colleges list. Recognized for its value and career options for its students, the Best 389 Colleges 2024 edition, newly published this month, ranks the university in two Top 50 categories—No. 3 in the undergraduate game design programs and No. 44 in Green Colleges.

Darcie Jones, a fifth-year mechanical engineering major from Reading, Pa., is this year’s Student Government president, representing more than 19,000 students on RIT’s Henrietta and overseas campuses. There were four sets of candidates this year, the most in recent history. This year’s Student Government vice president is J.T. Lapham, a fourth-year biochemistry major from Queensbury, N.Y.

A kosher deli, a food truck serving gourmet burgers, self-checkout micro-markets, and a buffet-style, all-you-care-to-eat Gracie’s are welcoming RIT students back to campus this academic year. Easier ordering and accessibility to know when an order is done will also be found throughout campus.