News

RIT honored the service and dedication of its employees with the Presidential Awards for Outstanding Staff ceremony March 22. The annual awards are presented to staff members who exemplify outstanding service and dedication to the university and who exhibit a high degree of personal ethics and integrity while consistently demonstrating a strong commitment to student success.

Nearly 70 different RIT student teams and clubs are poised to move into the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) this summer in preparation for the building’s official opening in the fall semester.

RIT earned a spot on the Forbes list of America’s Best Employers 2023. This award is presented by Forbes and Statista Inc., the statistics portal and industry ranking provider.

While the pressure to publish starts early in an academic’s career, RIT doctoral student Israa Thiab has a strategy to get the work done without the anxiety. Thiab, a student in the Golisano Institute for Sustainability, is working on her first journal article, using techniques she learned at a writing retreat sponsored by RIT’s Graduate School.

A 750-seat music performance theater will be constructed on the RIT campus to offer a venue for musical theater productions. The new building will be the first of two theaters in a performing arts center. The first phase will be an iconic building with more than 40,000 square feet of space, with anticipated completion in 2025.

As students head to class each day, a new showpiece is rising at the center of RIT’s campus. The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED)—which was first announced in 2017 and funded in part by a $50 million gift from alumnus Austin McChord ’09—is a multi-use complex that will showcase RIT’s technology, the arts, and design. The SHED is on track to open this fall.

Dining options at RIT are growing, with the introduction of a sandwich that has gotten a presidential seal of approval. Yes, you can still get a burger, Philly cheese steak, or a club sandwich. But starting Monday, you’ll also be able to order up a Munson.

The Ed Scoop podcast Cutting Edge talks to Ben Woelk, governance, awareness, and training manager, about cybersecurity and data privacy.

Some people categorize themselves as right-brained or left-brained when describing what they excel at—whether they are more analytical and practical, or more creative and artistic. Both sides have their value, and Maddy Schoenfeld ’20 (metals and jewelry design) believes that combining the analytical and creative can elevate a small business.

Fifty years ago, Title IX set the stage for change. But the reason why RIT now has more women faculty, administrators, coaches, and exemplary students is that women acted. Prior generations of women invested their careers to make RIT a better version of itself, including winning two transformative grants from the National Science Foundation focused on gender equity.

The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) and the renovated Wallace Library will reopen in less than a year. Work has begun to schedule the fall semester classes that will be held for the first time in the SHED complex, and Joe Loffredo, RIT associate vice president for Academic Affairs and registrar, is leading the effort to assign the classrooms in Wallace Library.

A comprehensive master planning process for the RIT campus that began in 2020 has resulted in a long-term, conceptual layout that will guide future growth and development across the university’s 1,300 acres over the next 25 to 50 years. The steering committee is now inviting final comments to the campus master plan during a review period that runs through Dec. 23, 2022.