The University News staff has worked to bring you its latest issue of Athenaeum which looks back on the summer activities of a few faculty members and students. From travel to research to community service—including one faculty member who welcomed their first child into the world in June—our faculty and students have proven, without a doubt, that summer time isn’t “down time.”

There are many other great features in this issue, including:

Semester conversion—It’s impossible to ignore RIT’s transition to a new calendar system, and we have included an interview with J. Fernando Naveda, the university’s mastermind behind semester conversion.

Student photography—A travel program sponsored by RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences allows students to travel to Cuba to document life behind a lens. I just wish we had room in the publication to print more of the breathtaking imagery submitted by our students.

Campus construction/renovation updates—A look at what you may have missed this summer related to new buildings, relocations and renovations.

Longtime faculty—R. Roger Remington, RIT’s longest serving faculty member, talks about his design career, friendship with Massimo Vignelli and the birth of the Graphic Design Archive.

Scholarship and research—A group of female RIT students have made an impact in the field of fuel cell and heat-transfer technologies and are using what they have discovered in the classroom and lab to tackle real-world projects.

Of course, these stories only scratch the surface of what’s new and exciting at RIT. Our staff is, once again, looking forward to bringing you the best of RIT in an award-winning format that is colorful, interesting and, of course, informative. As always, we encourage and welcome your feedback: email athena@rit.edu.

Welcome back to a new year, and enjoy Athenaeum.

Learning about building air muscles and ‘mimicking nature’ using robotics.

While today is the “official” new student orientation, many of our students arrived early and already have a head start on classes.

WE’re in Motion, part of RIT’s Women in Engineering program, hosted more than 100 female engineering students and their families this past weekend. They spent most of Monday meeting faculty members and working together in the labs in the college.

It’s been more years than I’d care to admit since I participated in college orientation. When I traveled from Rochester to Chaminade University of Honolulu, I stepped off the plane after too many hours flying and headed to the campus on a mountainside with a view across Waikiki, and overlooking Diamond Head volcano. It took my breath away.

But there was still a little trepidation—what would this college experience be like—and can I manage it? I can’t imagine our newest students not thinking very much the same thing.

What made my experience promising, (even more than being in Hawaii)? My first roommate was from Watertown, N.Y., my next-door neighbor was from Elmira and the floor RA was from Queens, N.Y. (and had the accent to prove it!) You have no idea how amazing that was—to find a little bit of New York so far away.

New students Sarah Bentzley and Sarah White worked with second-year computer engineering mentor Lydia Hays building robots.

The pre-orientation and orientation programs going on all this week at RIT are much the same—this is our way of setting up the students for success and building a sense of community. Sure, they’ll do all the formalities: schedule classes, learn faculty and advisers’ names, get an armload of books and navigate the hallways to classrooms.

Yet, sometimes, just having an early peek at what is going to happen takes away the trepidation and makes that first class something to look forward to.

And while classes will be intense, having these pre-class events provides the students a chance to meet others who are also just starting this adventure called college—a few days before they “officially” start.

So here’s to a new academic year – Aloha, E Komo Mai and Pomaika’i (hello, welcome and good luck!)

Designing an assembly process in the Toyota Production System Lab.

Working in the electrical engineering lab, students build sound indicator circuits.

Jason Rounds (right) gets ready to check out the course just before the Baja endurance race begins. Joining him is Cody Whelan, SAE risk management specialist.

I had the chance to meet him and his sister, Leah ’02 (business), at the Baja SAE World Challenge this past weekend. He is one of many former Baja competitors who enthusiastically returns to participate in events, as volunteers, judges and overall supporters of an exciting and inspiring race community. But he’s pretty inspiring in his own right:

“The SAE Baja program impacted my life as a student,” says Rounds. “I spent countless hours working on a team to create a successful program at RIT. While doing this it provided me experiences that prepared me to be a successful engineer within the automotive and truck industry. The skills that I learned from the program helped my career excel much quicker than my peers.”

Rounds is currently engineering manager for Navistar Truck Group’s Body Engineering Center of Excellence. Like many volunteers who participate at the SAE Baja events around the country, he takes time off from work to attend.

But he more than attends: For the RIT challenge, he was co-organizer, led the dynamic event logistics and judging and kept a close eye on the course as cars went speeding up and down muddy hills. He also has provided improvements and best practices to the important technical and safety inspections required at competitions.

All Baja cars are put through an intense technical inspection. Jason Rounds helped establish some of Baja’s ‘best practices.’

He was instrumental in ensuring that the technical judging at events was raised to an even higher level, working to provide a consistent training platform for volunteer judges and to ensure that these same judges participated at each of the national events.

Here’s a bit more about his contributions to SAE:  http://bit.ly/14X15rA

“I felt indebted to the program, and as a student I noticed many areas within the SAE Baja event that I thought I could help improve,” he adds.  “I met with SAE and drafted up a proposal on how things could be changed for the better and they agreed. I meet with thousands of students each year with the hope of providing them an experience even better than the one I had.”

Jason was one of RIT’s early Baja participants, a fearless course driver, and now one of the event’s biggest champions.

Leah (third from right) with Team Honda, says the events enable the students to get hand-on experience to use in the future.

We’re expecting nearly 100 collegiate Baja racing teams—including teams from Clarkson, SUNY Buffalo and Cornell along with the University of Michigan, Purdue and the University of Calgary, just to name a few.

Drop by the field house between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Friday  to meet the teams, see the cars and listen in on design presentations. Saturday, June 8, and Sunday, June 9, events move to Hogback Hill Motocross Course in Palmyra.

RIT and the RIT Baja Racing Team have hosted the SAE East competition several times over its 20-year history. Ask any one of the friendly competitors in the next few days and they’ll tell you they enjoy being here, the facilities are first class, the course is a major challenge, and the student-engineers on our team extend a welcome second-to-none.

Cecil Beehler, RIT Baja suspension designer, works with Baja Venezuela.

Behind the scenes, Baja cars and teams that arrive early have often come the farthest. Three teams from Brazil, one from Venezuela and another from Puerto Rico arrived in the past week, and their cars have been temporarily housed in bays in CIMS.

While teams go head-to-head during the competition, they are allies and peers in the machine shop. There, along with RIT Baja team members, teams reassemble cars, sometimes fixing or enhancing parts in the machine shop alongside guys (and gals) they’ll drive against over the weekend.

The field house is ideal for the opening day of safety checks, technical discussions and team presentations about what it takes to build an off-road vehicle. That preparation and commitment is put to the test over the next two days out at Hogback Hill Motocross Course in Palmyra.

Over hills and obstacles, through suspension challenges, tractor pulls and endurance races, it’s a pretty awesome display of great driving and young people with skills and nerves of steel.

Check out a gallery of photos by UNS photographer A. Sue Weisler from the 2010 competition, the last time RIT hosted teams for the Baja World Challenge.

Our cover story reports on six students who are eagerly anticipating their “graduation” into the workforce.  Their stories remind me of a recent conversation my husband and I had with our 11-year-old son.

Our son has unequivocally been stricken with a case of spring fever—simple chores are taking much longer to complete and are accompanied by a series of complaints; his motivation (or lack thereof) regarding his schoolwork is waning; his love for playing baseball is being replaced by “vegging out” in front of the television playing video games; and, perhaps it’s puberty that’s taken control, but there are times when he’s just being difficult, irrational, emotional, for no apparent reason.

My husband and I knew that an intervention was required, and we talked with our son about what it means to grow up, be responsible, give 110 percent, and be passionate about something—besides the best weapon to use to battle the Call of Duty zombies. We talked about drive, commitment and hard work—and the results of drive, commitment and hard work.

The student success stories that are featured in Athenaeum are examples of determination, perseverance and tenacity.  I told my son about how hard our students work, how brilliant they are, and how throwing in the towel isn’t an option for them. I told him that life is hard, and giving up is easy.  But you can’t take the easy way out—that’s not how we were raised and that’s not how we plan to raise him.

I thought about how inspired I am by our graduates, who make me want to learn a little bit more—about everything.

He said that he understood what we were telling him. My husband and I realize that we will probably have this conversation with him at least a dozen more times—and we’re OK with that. It’s the presence of students, teachers, fathers, mothers, siblings, friends—people who inspire us—who prove that these reminders are valuable.

Congratulations and best wishes to our graduates. You’ve worked hard and have earned all of the good things that will undoubtedly come your way.

Enjoy this issue of Athenaeum. To those of you who will remain on campus throughout the summer or will return this fall, Athenaeum will be back for the start of the new academic year filled with a whole new batch of inspirational stories.

Hey, if it’s a good idea—steal it! The cover story for the winter 2011-12 edition of RIT: The University Magazine, our alumni publication, featured alumni who have created amazing things, from the Super Bowl trophy to electric car technology.

Athenaeum’s cover story looks at RIT faculty members (and an amazing student-run project, made possible with faculty assistance) who have created their own masterpieces in the pursuits of engineering, science, robotics, design and the arts. Have you created something unique and amazing? Would you like to? Reach out to any one of these folks to find out how they got their creative juices flowing.

Everyone knows I have a soft spot for great human-interest stories. (Yeah, yeah – I know…who else but humans would find these stories interesting, right?) Our Student Spotlight looks into the amazing life of Bertin Mboko, a May graduate from the College of Liberal Arts’ international and global studies department. In 1997, soft-spoken Bertin led African refugees through the rainforest to safety in Gabon to escape brutal conditions resulting from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. As their leader, he worked with the United Nations and U.S. Embassy in Gabon to receive international aid before settling in the United States in 2007. Fast forward to 2013, and Bertin will take the stage in May as the College of Liberal Arts’ commencement undergraduate delegate.
This is an uplifting story that is an example of how hard work and perseverance can change a life.

Thanks for reading—enjoy!

Elissa Nesbitt, Xerox Corp. and Anthony Hennig, RIT Student Government

The students love their mentors, advisors and teachers, and the sport (yes, FIRST is considered a “Varsity Sport for the Mind”) moves forward because of them. Here are a few of the movers and shakers of FIRST with some RIT connections:

CAST’s Chris Brown and Team 1585 of FIRST.

When he wasn’t out front cheering on the students of Manchester-Shortsville HS – Team 1585 – Chris Brown, lab manager in CAST’s electrical, computer and telecommunications engineering technology department, was in the pit area helping the team put in final adjustments on a very successful robot. He is both an alumni of the high school (class of ’84), and returned to work as a mentor for Team 1585. When asked about him, the most unanimous and enthusiastic descriptor was “Awesome!”

Volunteer coordinators Kate Leipold, lecturer in KGCOE’s mechanical engineering department and Matt Campbell, software engineer with ITS, juggle more than 100 volunteers over the two days from judges to safety techs. Both have been leading the volunteer charge for several years. Kate is also a Woodie Flowers Award winner (a major big deal in FIRST – given by teams to stellar mentors.)

(l to r) Tom Viola, Xerox Corp., Kate Leipold, Alex Viola, 5th year mechanical engineering, Rick Bryant, CS alum and regional planning committee chair

The 2013 Woodie Flowers award winner, one of the most prestigious awards given, was given to CAST alumnus Larry Lewis. And the regional director, Rick Bryant of Xerox, is a graduate of RIT’s computer science program.

Volunteers on the floor and in the pits included: Laurie DelConte, formerly of NTID Audiology, (and a big, big RIT hockey fan) and Anthony Hennig, a mechanical engineering student and representative of RIT’s Student Government.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. While the event focuses on the teens and their robots (always fascinating and interesting), the behind-the-scenes connections are equally interesting because some of the biggest fans of FIRST are among us!

At least that’s been my experience in my new role as director of University News Services here at RIT. And I couldn’t be happier for it.

In my approximately three months on campus, I’ve met so many interesting (and incredibly friendly) students, faculty, administrators and fellow staffers. I’ve filled notebooks with information on the people and programs of the various colleges, and tried to read up on wide range of campus activities, in hopes that I’ll soon find time to join in some. I’ve even learned how to traverse campus from one end to the other without going outside too much, and where along the route to get a cup of coffee – actually, it’s usually an iced tea – and a cookie.

By way of introducing myself, I came to RIT via the world of journalism and public relations. I spent 25  years at the Democrat and Chronicle, as a reporter and editor, with my last job there as assistant managing editor for business news. From there, I spent more than six years as a vice president at the Rochester Business Alliance – the regional chamber of commerce – managing their marketing, communications and membership departments.

Here at RIT, I’m working with the talented staff of writers and editors at UNS to share the many exciting stories being generated here across a variety of media platforms – print, TV, radio, video, social media. We welcome story ideas, so if you have something to share, contact me at Ellen.Rosen@RIT.edu. I’m also on Twitter @Er_Rosen, so you can follow me there and I’ll return the favor.

It’s all part of the learning process. And believe me, there’s a lot to be learned here at RIT.

The 1,000-word cover story for the February/March edition of Athenaeum—Performing Arts at RIT—just isn’t enough to fully convey the passion, commitment and dedication of our students and faculty who devote much of their time to dance, music and drama. Several pages of interview notes were whittled down in an attempt to give our readers an inside look at the scholars who display such devotion to their crafts.

Our story reinforces the fact that many students who are engaged in the performing arts choose to supplement their already full academic loads with selections of more than 40 credit-bearing, performing arts courses including Music Theory, Modern European Theater and Beethoven, to name just a few.

Throughout the course of writing this story, I had the opportunity to meet with Michael Ruhling, professor of performing arts/music; Carl Atkins, professor and director of performing arts; and Thomas Warfield, director of the NTID Dance Company, all of whom spoke at length about the value of a strong performing arts curriculum and the steps that RIT should take to ensure the continued success of the program.

Right brain or left brain? Nonsense.  I learned that participating in the performing arts uses both sides of the brain. It’s creative and fluid, and involves a high degree of technical ability and concentration. It’s both a craft and a science.

A series of videos produced by University News’ Matt Gregory accompanies our cover story, providing a glimpse of performing arts students in action.  To see the videos, go to the RIT University News YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/RITUniversityNews and search for “Performing Arts.” In addition, this week’s News & Events Daily Friday “Student Spotlight” features Gabrielle Potts, a fourth-year industrial design major and president of RIT’s Pep Band. To read the spotlight, check out tomorrow’s News & Events Daily at www.rit.edu/news.

Other featured stories in this issue include a look at RIT’s rich architectural past, present and future; an explanation of mind-blowing research being conducted by a computing and information sciences Ph.D. student who is using a series of complex equations to pinpoint the exact origins of heart attacks; and a fun piece about 3-D print technology used to design working, scale-models of musical instruments. To see a video about this last story, go to the RIT University News YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/RITUniversityNews and search for “RIT Printed Ukulele.”

Enjoy!

NOTE: In the print edition of Athenaeum, photo credit for the images in the cover story and the cover photo was inadvertently left out. A. Sue Weisler, manager of photography for University News, spent many long hours creating the photography for this piece and we truly appreciate her time and energy to make it perfect.

In fact, keep your eyes peeled this week for summer graduates and fall Dean’s List announcements!

I’m really excited about this program because it’s great for students and the university. Student can get their achievements out there—which is especially helpful when more and more companies are Googling potential employees and checking their social media outlets.

Let’s take graduation and see how this works. At the end of the quarter, I request a list of graduates from the Registrar’s office. I ask for their names, e-mail addresses, hometown and ZIP code, program and degree in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I then write up a template using the column headers from the spreadsheet. It looks something like “(Name) graduated from RIT’s (college) with a (degree) in (program).” I upload these documents to Readabout.me, and it fills in the appropriate blanks and sends the release to the appropriate newspapers, based on the students’ ZIP codes. Then the student gets an e-mail saying that RIT wrote a story about them so they can then post it wherever they want. And it creates an online profile, so if I send more stories about these students, everything collects in one place. Pretty neat!

As always, student privacy is a priority. When we send a release through Readabout.me, we do so in accordance with the student privacy policy. Any student who does not want directory information released must notify the Office of the Registrar in writing. Directory information includes name, program, hometown, dates of attendance at RIT and degrees and awards received.

If you have any questions about Readabout.me, take a look at its Frequently Asked Questions page, leave a comment below or e-mail me at mdluns@rit.edu.