News by Topic: Student Experience

I and You, a collaborative production between NTID's Department of Performing Arts and the College of Liberal Arts Theatre Arts Program, has won a 2020 Outstanding Production Ensemble award from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

RIT is hosting a virtual event to raise money for the COVID-19 Emergency Fund, Division of Diversity and Inclusion General Support Fund, and other funds that directly impact students. "Tigers Helping Tigers: An Event to Move Students Forward" will include pre-recorded performances from RIT students and student groups and will be streamed online.

WHEC-TV talks to Nick Montemorano, fifth-year software engineering major, about being eligible to play lacrosse next spring.

RIT is hosting an online interfaith vigil titled “Calls for Justice at RIT” at 7 p.m. June 5 in response to the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent demonstrations against the systemic racism and police brutality that continue to affect black and brown people across the U.S.

Residents of a homeless shelter in Rochester are continuing to receive therapy during the coronavirus pandemic from a team of therapists in a clinical internship program at RIT. The doctoral training program began as an exercise in using telepsychology to deliver care to a marginalized and underserved population. When New York shut down in March to stem the spreading virus, the therapists were already prepared to apply the telehealth protocols in the crisis.

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.

As social distancing requirements forced distanced learning, students across the country suddenly had to consider where they would be doing that learning. The estimated 6,000 RIT students who lived on campus in a residence hall or apartment needed to collect, store or ship personal items. And staff members from RIT Housing, Residence Life and Student Affairs were faced with an array of unique situations.

All current RIT graduate students are invited to pit their problem-solving skills against each other in a university-wide competition. The Office of Graduate Education is holding online semifinals for the Graduate 3-Minute Presentation Competition. Contestants are asked to address a societal problem in a three-minute YouTube video, using their research, thesis or project, or creative work.

After the shift to distance learning in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, RIT students like Daniel Bacon, a second-year photographic sciences major, had to seamlessly transition to classes in the virtual space. 

RIT’s Class of 2020 is getting a bonus opportunity after last week’s virtual conferral of degrees — a ceremony in the video game Minecraft that will allow them to virtually walk across the graduation stage, receive a diploma from “Minecraft Munson” and take a photo with the Tiger statue.

Friday’s celebration of the Class of 2020 certainly cannot replace the atmosphere of a traditional commencement, which RIT plans to host on campus when it’s deemed safe. But many of graduates say they won’t let the pandemic, or the circumstances surrounding the virtual celebration, define them or their feelings about their time at RIT. (Pictured: Bradley Speck, who will finish his classes online this summer, has a job waiting for him at GE Aviation in Cincinnati, where he completed four co-ops.)

For more than 50 years, the New York State Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) has provided academic support, financial assistance, and advocacy for eligible students who would otherwise be excluded from higher education due to academic and economic disadvantage.