Photo Spotlights

Pranjal Sawai, center, an MFA student in visual communication design, won first place for her visual exhibit at the RIT Graduate Showcase on April 11. Her work is a reinterpretation of Panchatantra, or Indian animal fables. Sawai was inspired by traditional Indian shadow puppetry and western typography. She learned about typography while studying under RIT Assistant Professor Anne Jordan.

RIT’s Celebration of Teaching and Scholarship was held in Ingle Auditorium on April 10. The annual ceremony recognizes outstanding faculty, staff, and students for their excellence in innovation, teaching, and developing the next generation of leaders. A complete list of honorees is on the Celebration of Teaching and Scholarship webpage.

Students, faculty, and staff stepped out for the total solar eclipse on April 8. In addition to viewing the eclipse, the RIT community enjoyed Eclipse Fest activities on campus including glow dodgeball, a neon dance party, and space-themed food.

Gaining clinical work experience is important to undergraduates like Sway Issifou, right, first-year biomedical sciences major from Bronx, N.Y., who dreams of going to medical school. She met representatives from local hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical providers during the RIT College of Health Sciences and Technology’s first-ever Clinical Connections Fair held on March 27. “It gave me an introduction to networking and to a variety of healthcare occupations in and around Rochester,” Issifou said.

Adheesh Ankolekar, left, plays a mridangam during an awareness in music master class in the SHED with noted tabla musician Sandeep Das, who is an artist-in-residence at RIT this week with his band. Das adjusts the microphone as he mentions the importance of sound and microphone distance.

Matthew Wilde, a first-year student and forward on the RIT men’s hockey team, is greeted by cheering fans on March 26 as he leaves the Gene Polisseni Center locker room to board a bus to the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport. From there, the team headed to Sioux Falls, S.D., for the NCAA playoff game against Boston University this Thursday evening.

Tom Connelly, RIT’s director of outdoor education, center, teaches a lesson to students in the Maple Syrup and our Environment class, along with members of RIT’s Maple Sugaring Society, outside the Joseph M. Lobozzo Alumni House on March 5.

Athena Lemon, a fourth-year School of Individualized Study student, curated a new exhibit in RIT’s University Gallery called “Reframing History Through Lens and Legacy: A visual dialogue between Bernie Boston and the Ramsey-Lemon Archive.” The exhibit will be available to the public from Wednesday, Feb. 7, through Saturday, March 9. The exhibit includes a variety of archival images, including the image above which Boston photographed during the march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965.

Bestselling author and historian Ibram X. Kendi was the keynote speaker for this year’s Expressions of King’s Legacy held Jan. 30 at the Gordon Field House.

RIT kicked off the semester with a SHED open house on Jan. 18 and an invitation to explore RIT’s biggest creative hub. Here, RIT President David Munson welcomes the community to the new center of campus that combines makerspaces, performing arts spaces, and classrooms designed for active learning.

RIT alumna Krystle Ellis ’09, ’15 MS gives the keynote address during the annual Let Freedom Ring event held Jan. 15 on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Ingle Auditorium. The event, hosted by the Division of Diversity and Inclusion, is a chance for students, faculty, and staff to celebrate the federal holiday and honor King’s work.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, at podium, visited RIT’s Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) on Dec. 11 to deliver news on two federal funding initiatives. Gillibrand addressed $2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to update and expand RIT’s Semiconductor Fabrication Lab, where construction is underway. Gillibrand also recognized the work done by RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, while proposing a 3.6 percent increase of its annual federal appropriation to $95.9 million. Also delivering remarks were Gerry Buckley, far left, NTID president and RIT vice president and dean; and Doreen Edwards, second from left, dean of RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering.