RIT Upward Bound: Students Explore, Experience, and Exceed | September 2025

Eleven area high school students spent two weeks on-and-off the RIT campus thanks to the RIT Upward Bound Summer Experience program. Creating an experience of academic readiness with opportunities beyond the classroom was the goal according to coordinators who chose the perfect theme: “Explore, Experience and Exceed.” 

Tiffany Terry, assistant director, Upward Bound, says “The idea was created to offer an experience of the additional opportunities provided beyond the classroom but within the college journey. Explore, encouraging curiosity, discovery & stepping out of one’s comfort zone. Experience, learned through doing, feeling, and observing. Lastly, exceed, to go beyond any expectations to achieve more than what was thought possible.”

Terry and Victor Davidson, program director, lead the two-week summer program and say it couldn’t be done without the support of their RIT campus partners. Students spent time in the classroom with RIT faculty members Katrina Overby, School of Communication, and Nourridine Siewe, School of Mathematics and Statistics. Other partners included the Academic Success Center, RIT Archives, Diversity Theater, the Office of Career Services and Cooperative Education, and student mentors Benjamin Zaka and Regine Seche.

There were also lessons to be learned off-campus. A trip down the thruway, west of Rochester, found students at the Buffalo Navy Museum and on the Maid of the Mist in Niagara Falls. They also traveled to Maryland and toured the US Naval Academy, Morgan State University, took a history boat cruise along the Potomac River, and checked out an escape room that Terry says was a big hit. “It was all of the students’ first time, and they enjoyed working together and were surprised how they had to use their curiosity, leadership and teamwork skills during the games.”