News
Department of Civil Engineering Technology, Environmental Management and Safety

A record number of first-year students Wednesday made their way to the Gordon Field House and Activities Center to cheers and welcomes from faculty, staff, and members of the RIT Pep Band during the annual Tiger Walk and New Student Convocation.

RIT alumnus James Frederick has not only held the position of deputy assistant secretary for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since January, but he has managed the day-to-day operations of OSHA while the agency’s incoming nominee for assistant secretary awaits confirmation by Congress.

Mathematical modeling has been a powerful tool for policymakers grappling with COVID-19 to help predict how targeted actions can impact the rates of infections, minimize the risk of exposures, increase recovery rates, and much more. Fifteen seniors who took the Senior Capstone in Math course this spring put their modeling skills to the test to help officials evaluate past policies and predict future outcomes.

Transitioning demanding engineering classes to the online environment throughout the pandemic was a challenge, but Associate Professor Amanda Bao adjusted by supplementing lectures with a series of interactive and accessible materials that enhanced student learning.

Associate Professor Amanda Bao brings extensive experience in building bridges and strong connections to students to her classroom, and she is being honored with a 2021 Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching.

RIT is continuing to refine the way it monitors wastewater to assess the prevalence of coronavirus on campus.

More than a dozen RIT administrators and staff members have met regularly to discuss ways to help keep campus open as safely as possible as more is learned about COVID-19. To provide a student perspective, Griffin Warntz is serving on RIT’s Spring Planning Task Force.

RIT spent more than $8.2 million to make RIT’s campus as safe and clean as possible so that students, faculty, and staff could study and work confidently and comfortably. The university’s Infrastructure and Health Technologies Task Force implemented a variety of changes to RIT’s academic settings, housing, and dining designed to fight the spread of the coronavirus.

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.

Dan Gabber, digital fabrication specialist in RIT’s College of Art and Design, has developed a creative solution for users of chemical respirators who also must protect against the spread of COVID-19: valve covers.

Many of RIT’s international students who were accepted at the Rochester campus but were unable to get to the U.S. because of travel and visa restrictions have found enrollment alternatives and connections to classmates at all the university’s campuses.

In a biology lab in Gosnell Hall, Professor André Hudson has been spending hours this summer testing products to see whether they are effective at killing and filtering microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The effort is part of RIT’s Infrastructure and Health Technologies task force, which is putting changes in place to make RIT’s campus as safe and clean as possible in the fall.