Newsmakers

Highlighting the professional and academic accomplishments of College of Liberal Arts students, faculty, and staff.

Newsmakers are a quick and easy way to acknowledge the professional and academic accomplishments of RIT students, faculty, and staff, such as publishing an article in a scholarly journal, presenting research at a conference, serving on a panel discussion, earning a scholarship, or winning an award. Newsmakers appear in News and Events as well as the "In the News" section on faculty/staff directory profile pages.

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June 2026

  • June 25, 2026

    Nickesia Gordon, associate professor in the School of Communication, published the article “Neglect, Silence, and Complicity: The Menace of Child Sexual Abuse in Queen Ifrica’s 'Predator’s Paradise' and 'Daddy Don’t Touch Me There'” in Springer Nature's International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication.

  • June 17, 2026

    Frank Marra, adjunct professor in the College of Liberal Arts, received an Educator of the Year award from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Rochester Chapter at the 2026 PRSA PRism awards ceremony. Additionally, students in Marra’s Communication 253 course received a PRSA Award of Excellence for their class project, “West Virginia University Online Classes Engagement,” and students in Marra’s Communication 212 (Public Relations) course received a PRSA Award of Excellence for their class project, “CPR You Ready,” at the ceremony.

  • June 12, 2026

    Katrina Overby, assistant professor in the School of Communication, presented her paper, “Gotta Tell My Story: Storyworlding, Reflexivity, and Archiving as Praxis in the Future of Black Women’s Communication Scholarship,” at the International Communication Association Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Her presentation was featured on the panel, “(Re)Energizing ERIC: Communication, Inequalities, and the Future of the Scholarship.” Drawing from Black feminist theory, digital media studies, and reflexive ethnographic practice, Overby explored how storytelling, witnessing, and archiving can inform the future of communication scholarship and create space for more embodied, community-centered approaches to knowledge production.

  • June 10, 2026

    Eugene Jang, assistant professor of journalism, received the 2026 Herbert S. Dordick Dissertation Award from the Communication and Technology Division of the International Communication Association on June 7 in Cape Town, South Africa. Jang's dissertation examined how social media affordances influence social support exchanges in long COVID communities across Reddit and X, formerly known as Twitter.

  • June 5, 2026

    Caroline DeLong, professor of psychology, presented “Animal Detectives: Problem Solving in Orangutans and Otters” at the Little Theatre on May 31, ahead of a screening of Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, as part of the Science on Screen program. Science on Screen pairs screenings of films with presentations by notable local figures from the world of science, technology, and medicine. DeLong's presentation showcased research by graduate and undergraduate students at the RIT Comparative Cognition and Perception Lab.

  • June 4, 2026

    With support from the College of Liberal Arts Dean's Office, Assistant Professor Divya Ramjee and Professor Evan Selinger hosted a workshop at the Tait Preserve on June 4 to jump-start collaborative, interdisciplinary privacy research between scholars at RIT, Cornell University, Syracuse University, and University at Buffalo. Although upstate New York is home to leading researchers in the humanities and social sciences, this is the first in-person event in the region dedicated to facilitating cross-university projects on privacy ethics, privacy policy, and privacy education.

  • June 1, 2026

    RIT’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Lab hosted researchers from the National Gallery of Art on May 29, in support of an ongoing initiative called The CIIIPRESES Project. Developed by art historian Matthew Westerby, the digital research initiative is focused on medieval choir book leaves and was designed to aggregate dispersed manuscript fragments across different collections and support art historical and scientific research questions. Lab co-directors Juilee Decker and David Messinger helped facilitate the documentation of a choir book leaf from Eastman School of Music using hyperspectral, FORS, and UV imaging.

May 2026

  • May 27, 2026

    Amit Batabyal, the Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics and head of the Department of Sustainability, received an Editor of Distinction Award from Springer Nature for his work in Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences.

  • May 19, 2026

    Cecilia Alm, professor of psychology and artificial intelligence program director, was an invited speaker at a special session of the Global Science Forum of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. Alm spoke on her work directing the National Science Foundation-supported IRES AI-PROWIL program, which involves an international research training partnership between RIT and University West in Sweden.