News
Katrina Overby

Only two percent of full professors at US colleges and universities are Black women, according to National Center for Education Statistics data, and Black faculty as a whole make up about six percent of all faculty. During the Sister Scholars Connect Writing Retreat held last month at RIT’s Tait Preserve, more than 30 Black women faculty from throughout the region met for a day of scholarly writing, collaboration, mentoring, and support. 

RIT’s annual event commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day will feature a keynote address by a faculty member whose work explores the intersections of communication, race, and identity. Katrina Overby, an assistant professor in the School of Communication, will headline the sixth annual Let Freedom Ring.

RIT has modernized its approach to recruiting faculty members to improve representation. Assistant Professor Eli Borrego, pictured above, is an expert in the genetics and biochemistry of plant-microbe and plant-insect communication and ecology, and he was introduced to RIT through the Future Faculty Career Exploration Program.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 53: RIT is diversifying its faculty in many ways, and the Future Faculty Career Exploration Program is one of the most important avenues for doing so. Katrina Overby, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Communication and a past participant in the program, talks with Donathan Brown, assistant provost and assistant vice president for faculty diversity and recruitment, about why the program is seen as a model nationally in launching the careers of underrepresented scholars.

WROC-TV talks to Katrina Overby, assistant professor in the School of Communication, about the uptick in "digital dares."

Unique Fair-Smith and Tymoni Correa-Buntley are the first two recipients of the Mark and Maureen Davitt Graduate Education Endowed Scholarship and are both set to graduate with their master’s degrees this weekend.

The Democrat and Chronicle reports on an online panel of Black journalists hosted by the Division of Diversity and Inclusion and journalism program in the School of Communication.

RIT will host a virtual panel discussion focused on the unique challenges and opportunities facing Black journalists and why representation in the media matters. The event, titled Reporting While Black, will feature six Rochester-based Black journalists from TV, radio, and print media at both the local and national level.