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Monika Verma has dedicated her capstone project to COVID patients across the world, after the pandemic hit too close to home for her last year. The graduating human-computer interaction master’s student is drawing from her family’s experience with COVID in hopes of finding ways to help others in similar situations.

Laura Discavage originally wanted to go to an out-of-state college, but RIT’s engineering program intrigued her. She learned about RIT while growing up from her mom, Maria Burgio ’87 (computer science). And after a conversation with a family friend about his work as an industrial engineer, she applied to RIT, and found the community she was seeking.

While she’ll look back on the pandemic as a most challenging time, graduating new media design student Stephanie Liu also takes pride in knowing how well she rose to the occasion. At the culmination of her internship with Amazon Web Services, the Chicago native was offered a full-time position as a user experience (UX) designer, starting in July.

RIT/NTID student Shaylee Fogelberg has always loved being in the spotlight. And she plans to continue to shine at the prestigious IRT Theater in Greenwich Village after she graduates this spring with a degree in design and imaging technology in NTID’s visual communications studies program.

Jared Gregor is about to graduate with a degree in imaging science and take an exciting new job at Facebook Reality Labs, but he never would have found his college major without a happy accident.

Katie Keegan has always been a fan of history. As a child growing up in Ithaca, N.Y., Keegan would ask her parents to plan family vacations to museums or historical sites, not Disneyworld or the beach. So when it was time for Keegan to decide on a college major, her parents suggested museum studies.

It’s been nearly 30 years since T.J. Griesenbrock first attended RIT. But he never could call himself a graduate because he needed just two more courses to earn his degree.

Yudong Yan, a 2021 graduate of RIT’s Master of Architecture program, which uniquely fuses architecture with sustainability within the Golisano Institute for Sustainability, has landed his first job with Strabala + Architects.

Kamille Davis may have followed her brothers to RIT, but she is a leader in her own right. As the third in her family to graduate from the mechanical engineering technology program, Davis set her own pace early—excelling in classes, on the basketball court, in the laboratory, and in the community.

Eric Avar ’90 (industrial design), Nike’s vice president and creative guide of innovation design, has been selected as a 2021 commencement speaker on May 14 and 15. Avar, who was honored with the College of Art and Design Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016, joins Andrea Ghez—a 2020 Nobel Prize winner in physics—as the university’s first-ever dual commencement speakers during a two-day celebration of the Class of 2021.

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.)