Newsmakers

May 20, 2024

Richard Newman, professor of history, was a featured panelist at a preview screening of the PBS documentary Poisoned Ground on April 16 in New York City. Newman served as an historical commentator on the documentary, which re-examined the Love Canal chemical disaster in Niagara Falls in 1978. The documentary, which debuted on PBS stations nationally on April 22, is now streaming at the American Experience website.

May 17, 2024

James Rankine, visiting lecturer in the Department of History, contributed the chapter “Henry Glasby: Atypical Pirate or a Typical Pirate?” to the new edited volume The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World.

May 15, 2024

Jonathan Schroeder, the William A. Kern Professor of Communications, published the third book in a trilogy on the cultural history of vinyl records. Designed for Success: Better Living and Self-Improvement with Midcentury Instructional Records, published with co-author Janet Borgerson, shows how instructional records tap into a distinctly U.S. belief in self-transformation, touted through transcendentalist notions of aspirational striving and human development. The book marks the first comprehensive analysis of instructional records with 125 full-color images of album covers and photography from the 1950s and 1960s.

May 6, 2024

Kaitlin Stack Whitney, assistant professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society, was awarded the 2024-2025 Ronald D. Dodge Memorial Faculty Grant for the project “Assessing ableism in campus biology textbooks and teaching materials.” Dodge grants support research and development efforts aimed at improving the effectiveness of faculty engaged in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing students at RIT.

April 29, 2024

Myren Bobryk-Ozaki, a fourth-year communication major, was named to the 2024 ALL IN Student Voting Honor Roll. Bobryk-Ozaki is one of only 137 students nationwide to receive this distinction, recognized as a Voter Engagement Leadership Scholar with RIT’s Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement. This ALL IN distinction highlights college student leaders for committing to nonpartisan democratic engagement and contributions to their local communities.

April 29, 2024

Jeffrey Wagner, professor of economics, presented “The Economics of Sustainable Space Waste Management” at The Business of Space 2024 Conference: Economics, Commerce, and Sustainability of New Space, at The University of Alabama in Huntsville on April 23. Wagner’s talk was based on the chapter he contributed to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the ‘New’ Space Economy.

April 29, 2024

Marjorie Prokosch, assistant professor of psychology, won best faculty talk at the Northeastern Evolutionary Society’s Annual Conference on April 20  for the presentation, “Hierarchies and Hazards: Examining the Links Between Formidability, Worldview, and Beliefs About Disasters and Climate.”

April 26, 2024

Caroline DeLong, professor of psychology; Anna Sofia Hege, a first-year graduate student in the experimental psychology master’s degree program; and Logan Brownell, a fourth-year psychology major, presented posters at the 31st annual International Conference on Comparative Cognition, April 11-12 in Albuquerque, N.M. The posters focused on research on cognitive abilities in olive baboons, goldfish, and otters. Several undergraduate students contributed including Isabel Hanick-Herman, McKenzie Wolfe, and Victoria Curtis, as well as RIT alumnae Jessica Wegman and Katie Becker.

April 26, 2024

The research of Christine Keiner, chair of the Science, Technology, and Society department, was featured in A Passion for Oysters, a documentary that aired on Maryland Public Television on April 24, as part of its 20th annual Chesapeake Bay Week programming.

April 25, 2024

Amit Batabyal, Distinguished Professor, the Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics, and interim head of the Department of Sustainability, presented a webinar on sustainable technologies to faculty and students at Sri Sri University in Cuttack, India, on April 18.