News by Topic: Technology, The Arts, And Design

RIT alumnus and trustee Brooks Bower ’74 (printing) has made a gift to the multi-use complex under construction that will showcase the university as a place for technology, the arts, and design.

RIT’s unique blend of education at the intersection of technology, the arts, and design is in demand. Officials expect RIT to welcome the second largest class ever this fall and call it the most selective group of first-year students in the university’s history.

Construction on the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (the SHED) this summer will begin to move beyond the complex to the surrounding area.

Frank Cost, who served as associate dean and then interim dean of what was then RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences (now the College of Art and Design) from 1997 through 2011, is retiring after 40 years.

After a three-year pause because of the pandemic, students, faculty, staff, and alumni from the College of Art and Design will descend on Manhattan this week for NYCxDesign—New York City’s annual celebration of design that attracts hundreds of thousands from around the globe—which is marking its 10th year.

Fellow RIT Tigers: Our university has so much to celebrate! This truly is an extraordinary time for RIT with our amazing community of creators and innovators. Yet our work to build a great student-centered research university perpetually continues.

As RIT prepares to open a School of Performing Arts, the new instructors that will come with the school will join an already talented pool of faculty and staff members who have been helping students eager to pursue their passions of music, dance, and acting, for years.

Say Cheese, a pioneering, heartfelt film directed and produced by two RIT students, took home the top prize in the Coca-Cola Refreshing Films program announced during the final night of CinemaCon in Las Vegas late Thursday. The project featured the combined creative efforts of students, faculty, and staff in RIT’s School of Film and Animation and NTID.

As the nation’s reshuffled economy rebounds from the pandemic, RIT students graduating from a university renowned for its academic rigor combined with successful internships and co-op experiences are leveraging multiple job offers into their top choices.

After going virtual for 2021, thousands of people came to the RIT campus on Saturday for an in-person Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival, which featured more than 250 exhibits throughout the campus from more than 1,800 students and faculty.

Three student teams showed what technology, the arts, and design means at RIT. They designed technology to help astronauts keep physically fit in space, incorporated virtual reality to enhance signing and captioning support for the Deaf, and built a modern sculpture of the human body made of computers.

Aaron Gordon ’13, CEO of Optic Sky, an advertising and digital experience production company; Franklyn Athias ’85, CTO and senior vice president for Xfinity Mobile Retail Convergence; and Erin Sarofsky ’98, ’00 MFA, an award-winning creative visionary, discussed how the pandemic opened up the eyes of many industries to the future.