News

With so many uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic this year, one thing remains constant: People need to eat. Whether it’s a breakfast sandwich, a healthy salad, or even a hot Thanksgiving Day meal, the essential workers at RIT Dining have scrambled this year to safely accommodate hungry students, faculty, and staff.

Sarah Haberbusch has been an integral piece of the fabric of RIT for 50 years. She began her career at the university in October 1970, and over the past half-century, Haberbusch has seen many changes.

A new app from the New York State Department of Health can alert people if they have been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19 — and all without compromising user privacy and personal information.

Two large, heated tents are being erected to offer students on the RIT campus additional options for dining, studying, and safely socializing.

A Black Lives Matter rally, complete with speakers, music, poetry, and dancing groups, is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 3, on campus by RIT students. Performances are expected by RIT Velocity, a student-run urban dance team, and Sunshine 2.0 performance group from RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Over the past 50 years, Bruce Bates has worked with seven RIT presidents behind the scenes. He witnessed RIT move a campus from downtown to Henrietta. And he’s made strategic decisions that have helped propel RIT to the global university it is today. For his dedication and passion to RIT, Bates will receive RIT’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award during a virtual celebration on Sept. 24.

Cosimo X invests in businesses that use digital assets and blockchain protocols to advance the digital economy. According to industry experts, the investment by RIT marks the first time that any university in the United States has directly invested in a tokenized venture fund. The fund’s parent company, Cosimo Ventures, was co-founded six years ago by RIT alumnus Robert Frasca ’88 (mechanical engineering).

What began as an idea to provide a one-stop resource to provide technical support has become a center where RIT students, parents, faculty, and staff can find answers to so much more, including the latest COVID-19 guidelines.

What happens when you witness someone who isn’t being as COVID-careful as they should be? An online COVID Violation Reporting Form went live just over a month ago to afford faculty, staff, and students the opportunity to officially log concerns they feel should be addressed.

Students, faculty, and staff who have returned to the RIT campus can’t help notice the numerous changes in place to help people keep safer during the COVID-19 pandemic. But they may not know how much thought went in to make those changes, and the work that occurred—and continues to occur—in classrooms, residential areas, offices, dining facilities, bathrooms, and common spaces.

Michael Guglielmo never envisioned that he would spend a summer co-op helping his university prepare to fight off a pandemic. But the fifth-year student from Henrietta, N.Y., pursuing his BS in industrial engineering and ME in industrial and systems engineering helped put measures in place that will make everyone who sets foot on campus this fall safer.

New and returning students will move into the residence halls over the next week, in a carefully staged process aimed at ensuring a safe reopening of the campus amid the COVID-19 pandemic. New students will move in today through Aug. 15; returning students will move in Aug. 16-18.