Photo Spotlights

Sophie Faske, 4, takes off to gather eggs at RIT’s 10th annual Easter Egg Hunt on April 19. More than 1,000 candy-filled eggs were scattered across the Eastman Kodak Quad for children to find and put in their baskets. The event is co-sponsored by The Students of Art House and The RIT Leadership Institute and Community Service Center.

Dan Wang, a fourth-year professional photographic illustration student, was one of three photography students from New York who photographed the new 2015 Corvette Z06 convertible before it was revealed at the New York International Auto Show. Wang has a chance to win $5,000. For more information and to vote, go to http://s.chevy.com/voteZ06. Voting ends April 22.

RIT student Casey Martin shoots at an opposing team during the National Collegiate Paintball Association National Championship match April 12 in Lakeland, Fla. The RIT Paintball Club finished in 14th place, competing with 60 colleges. In the overall season, the team is ranked No. 1 in the Northeast and No. 3 in the U.S.

Members of RIT’s Student Government traveled to Dubai during spring break to meet with the Student Government leaders of RIT Dubai, RIT Croatia-Dubrovnik and RIT Zagreb. Paul Darragh, Student Government president, and Nick Cifranic, Student Government vice president, attended the second RIT Student Government Global Consortium to help bring the global campuses together in a joint effort to promote idea sharing.

“I think that each campus learned something new that we will be able to take back home to improve student life,” said Darragh. “We even started making plans to all use the same sg.rit.edu website in the future.”

In addition to work, the group explored the city, took a desert safari on a dune buggy and rode camels. The group has stayed in touch through Google Hangout and they plan to continue meeting online every week.

Each year, the senior leaders of the colleges and centers select one graduate from each college who represents the best of RIT. This year, RIT honored 10 Distinguished Alumni who stand out among the more than 110,000 accomplished graduates. The awards were presented on April 11. Pictured, from left to right, are Andrew Jacobson, Tristan O‘Tierney, Stacey Rychlewski, Mark Gentile, Johann “Hans” Demmel, Rick Kittles, Ricardo Venegas (RIT Alumni Association President) and Frank Sklarsky. Seated: Herb Eichelberger, Debra Heath-Thornton. Not pictured: Kelly McCormick-Sullivan. To read more about the 2014 Distinguished Alumni, go to www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=50628.

Rick A. Kittles ’89 (biology) received a distinguished alumni award April 11. Kittles helped establish the National Human Genome Center. Currently, he is associate professor in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is at the forefront of developing ancestry-informative genetic markers and studying how this information can be used to map genes for common traits and disease, especially among African-American populations. His talk, “The Epidemiology of Prostate Cancer: Genomic Insights,” was a College of Science Series Lecture.

A ceremonial groundbreaking for the Clinical Health Sciences Center took place April 11. The Clinical Health Sciences Center will accommodate the growth of existing and future clinical programs in RIT’s College of Health Sciences and Technology, including the new Wegmans School of Health and Nutrition. The facility will also house a primary care clinic operated by Rochester General Health System, a development made possible through the RIT-RGHS Alliance, now in its fifth year.

Experimental game designer and Emmy-award nominee Tracy Fullerton, second from right, worked with RIT game design students April 10 as part of her campus visit. Fullerton, associate professor and chair of the Interactive Media Division of University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and director of the USC Game Innovation Lab, presented a talk for Where Text and Code Collide: Digital Humanities Distinguished Speaker Series. Fullerton has appeared on Time magazine’s Best of the Web list and the Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment Power 100.” Her talk was sponsored by the RIT Project for the Digital Humanities, College of Liberal Arts and the Gannett Endowment for the Humanities.

Erika Mesh, a computing and information sciences doctoral student, likes the direction RIT is heading on research and hopes to give back to the university that has given her so much.

Heath Boice-Pardee, interim senior vice president for student affairs, is also an accomplished mystery novel writer. Two books have already been published as part of the Ocean Grove Mysteries series, and a third book is underway.

RIT hosted a Rwanda Genocide Twenty Year Commemoration and Remembrance ceremony April 7. RIT students and faculty with connections to Rwanda opened up discussion about the Rwandan Genocide, a 1994 state-backed campaign in which more than 800,000 people were killed. Here, College of Liberal Arts student Abubakar Ali lights a candle during the candlelight vigil.

RIT Student Government announced a bike share program for the RIT campus April 7. The free service allows students, faculty and staff to borrow a bike that they can use anywhere for up to 24 hours. The program will initially start with 20 orange Fuji Barnebey bicycles that can be rented from the Residential Office in Kate Gleason Hall. RIT Student Government hopes to grow the program with more bikes being offered at different locations on campus. Here, Student Government President Paul Darragh leads a test ride with the bikes.