News by Topic: Women

As part of a summer faculty development workshop sponsored by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), Patricia Cyr was recommended by workshop leaders for the fellowship because of her work during the program and while teaching at RIT to advance engineering course activities and to improve student learning outcomes.

Students on co-op are picking up more than occupational and professional skills. As the pandemic unfolded last spring and summer, they saw firsthand how companies manage even in the midst of a crisis.

There are several unique classes being offered in the spring across RIT's colleges. While some of the classes are for specific majors or require prerequisite classes, some of the courses are being offered as general education classes.

Debbie Stendardi, who retires as vice president of Government and Community Relations at the end of the year, leaves an indelible mark on both RIT and the Greater Rochester region—both of which she has advanced considerably through her advocacy efforts for more than four decades. In a far-ranging interview, the unassuming Stendardi reflected on her longtime career and widespread impact.

RIT has selected Vanessa J. Herman, a higher education veteran, as its new vice president for Government and Community Relations. Herman, currently serving as assistant vice president for government and community relations at Pace University, was chosen after a national search. She begins her RIT duties on Jan. 4, 2021.

RIT recently received a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop course modules that will provide students with guidelines and best practices in standards information toward helping organizations manage crisis situations.

RIT’s annual celebration of graduate research begins this week with an online platform that reflects the new normal during COVID-19. The virtual symposium also expands the content to an audience of international graduate students who started their programs from their home countries.

An art installation depicting Anna Murray Douglass, the first wife of famed social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, will be unveiled today at the site of where the couple lived at 297 Alexander St. in Rochester from 1848 to 1851. The piece was funded by RIT.

RIT will celebrate graduate research during the 13th annual Graduate Education Week and Showcase: A Vision into the Future. The virtual event—Nov. 16 to 20—creates a platform for sharing and exchanging ideas during the COVID-19 pandemic, with pre-recorded and live presentations, demonstrations, visual exhibitions, and an alumni panel discussion.

RIT alumni contributed to a major exhibition at the Rochester Museum & Science Center highlighting Rochester and Haudenosaunee women who pushed for social change. “The Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World” opens Nov. 20.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 38: In 1920, women in the U.S. won the right to vote. But the 19th Amendment did not flip the switch for women equally, and the struggle against voter suppression continues. RIT Associate Professor Tamar Carroll and fourth-year student Anika Griffiths speak with Johns Hopkins University professor Martha S. Jones about the past, present, and future of voting rights and social justice in America.

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.