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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August 2020

  • August 11, 2020

    Ammina Kothari, associate professor of communication, has been selected by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication as one of the Institute for Diverse Leadership fellows. The goal of this program is to provide a year-long administrative training for people of color and women.

  • August 11, 2020

    Preethi Vaidyanathan ’10 MS (electrical engineering), ’18 Ph.D. (imaging science), a research scientist at EyeGaze Inc., published the article “Computational framework for fusing eye movements and spoken narratives for image annotation” in the Journal of Vision with co-authors Cissi Ovesdotter Alm, associate professor in the Department of English; Jeff Pelz, Endowed Professorship in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science; and Emily Prud'hommeaux, assistant professor at Boston College.

July 2020

  • July 28, 2020

    Kaitlin Stack Whitney, assistant professor of science, technology, and society, was selected for the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network international workshops on green infrastructure. The symposia bring scholars, activists, community organizers, and other practitioners to build urban resilience through exploration of equitable and multifunctional green infrastructure implementation for the new climate normal.

  • July 23, 2020

    A paper on the effects of eye-contact in remote communication derived from a master’s thesis introduction is being cited in guides for workplace meetings and online teaching. The paper authors are Leanne Bohannon ’07 (psychology), ’10 (experimental psychology); Andrew Herbert, a professor in the Department of Psychology; Jeff Pelz, the Endowed Professorship in RIT’s Center for Imaging Science; and Esa Rantanen, associate professor in the Department of Psychology.

  • July 14, 2020

    Kaitlin Stack Whitney, assistant professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society, has been named a mentor for the 2019-2020 academic year for the Ecological Society of America in conjunction with the Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis Project, an open education community supported by the National Science Foundation intended to increase the effectiveness of undergraduate STEM education.

  • July 5, 2020

    Cecilia O. Alm, associate professor of English, was Diversity and Inclusion co-chair with Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, research scientist at Google, for ACL 2020, the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, which took place virtually July 5-10. ACL is the world’s leading venue for computational research on natural language.

June 2020

  • June 25, 2020

    Chris Ferrari, a second-year marketing and political science double major from Spencerport, N.Y., ran for the Spencerport Board of Education and finished fourth. He was 92 votes short of winning a seat on the board.

May 2020

  • May 6, 2020

    Eva Hall, a fifth-year biomedical engineering major from North Hollywood, Calif.; Nina Lentini, a fourth-year film production major from Mattituck, N.Y.; Matt Miller, a fifth-year electrical engineering major from Buffalo, N.Y.; and Jessica Visco, of Orchard Park, N.Y., who graduated in December with a degree in media arts and technology, were inducted May 6 into the National Italian Honor Society, Gamma Kappa Alpha, for excellence in Italian studies. They were nominated by Elisabetta D’Amanda, principal lecturer of Italian in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures.

April 2020

  • April 28, 2020

    Jonathan Schroeder, the William A. Kern Professor of Communications, recently published two papers: “A Brand Culture Approach to Brand Literacy: Consumer Co-creation and Emerging Chinese Luxury Brands," in the Journal of Cultural Management Research and “Branding as Soft Power: Brand Culture and the 2008 Beijing Olympics,” in the book Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds.