RIT students put on the RITz for the first time in a decade

With just three months to prepare, students in hospitality and tourism management courses took on a 40-year tradition. They designed a globally inspired menu from scratch and handled tasks like registration, marketing, and logistics, all while many are finishing their final semester.

On April 11, those students will showcase the fruits of their labor as they take over the Genesee Valley Club in downtown Rochester for Puttin' on the RITz: Passport to Hospitality. The formal student-run fundraising event returns for the first time in nearly a decade.

The RITz has been a cornerstone of the hospitality program since 1986, bringing together students, alumni, sponsors, and the community as a celebration of student innovation. Over the decades, it has taken on many forms—casino nights, speakeasy themes, a New York, New York-inspired evening among them—and traveled as far as RIT’s Croatia campus in 2017.

Dan Jin, assistant professor and principal faculty adviser for Puttin’ on the RITz, guided students through every stage of event project management—from concept to execution—across her event and project management and capstone courses.

Their responsibilities included managing a budget, creating a website, and handling logistics with the staff at Genesee Valley Club. They coordinated with RIT student performers including Jazz Ensemble and Double Stop. They also designed decorations, centerpieces, and staff uniforms, and reached out to local community partners for donations to support the silent auction.

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Kristal Jenkins

Noa Lee, a second-year individualized studies student, tries on the event uniform designed by classmates as part of their event management coursework.

RITz 2026 returns as a cocktail-style event, a departure from the formal sit-down dinners of past events. In relating to the theme, Passport to Hospitality, food stations representing countries and cultures from around the world will invite guests to mingle and explore.

Senior lecturer Edward Ganster’s food and beverage management class took ownership of the menu, with students designing, testing, and refining dishes in real time. Food and beverage students tested recipes before negotiating the final menu with the venue. Students from the RIT Croatia and Dubai campuses helped shape the international menu and feel of the event.

“Being able to expand our palates and our horizons on perspectives on food was very good for us,” said David Lanpher, a fifth-year hospitality and global business management student from Rochester, serving as co-food and beverage director with fellow hospitality student and fourth-year Rochester native Dan Hooper.

Support from Saunders College of Business, led by Department Chair Edwin Torres and Saunders Dean Jacqueline Mozrall, helped make the event possible.

“Hands-on learning experiences like this require significant financial support, and those budget demands can often make faculty hesitate to take them on,” Jin said. “With this support, however, we were able to make the event happen and give students a truly meaningful learning experience.”

For the students who spent the better part of a semester bringing the RITz back to life, the sold-out event is validation enough. But for many, the experience means something more personal.

“There was a tremendous amount of coordination happening behind the scenes between students, faculty, vendors, and the venue,” said Brooke Milliken, a fourth-year hospitality student from Rochester who led student recruitment and training. “Seeing how all those elements came together has been eye-opening and has given me an even greater appreciation for large-scale event planning.”

Annalise Baker, a fourth-year hospitality student from Hudson Falls, N.Y., will walk across the graduation stage in May. For Baker, embracing the unexpected became the defining lesson of a capstone project that captured something essential about her time at RIT.

“Yes, I can sit in a lecture three times a week, but you're never truly going to learn how to do events without actually going through the process,” she said. “I could put this on my resume, without a doubt.”