Photo Spotlights

Fourth-year industrial design students are busy fabricating chairs they designed and created using Wilsonart laminate. The project is part of a partnership with Wilsonart International, spearheaded by RIT professor Josh Owen. Next month, the students’ final chair designs will be juried by international design professionals. The winning student design will be among those featured at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in May in New York City. The top student will win a $1,000 scholarship.

Gerard DeLone, a chocolate lover from Facilities and Management Services, sampled a variety of homemade truffles at the Brick City Catering open house on Jan. 21. Customers ordering Valentine’s Day truffles will be entered into a drawing to win a free truffle-making class with chef Autumn Geer, on right.

One of America’s best known and widely read poets, Nikki Giovanni, gave the keynote address at the Expressions of King’s Legacy event on Jan. 24. She talked about the strength found in communities, social justice, activism and diversity. Earlier in the day, she met with students from the College of Liberal Arts as part of a poetry seminar class.

The Liberal Arts Minor and Concentration Fair on Jan. 21 featured faculty representatives from the more than 40 minors and concentrations offered through the College of Liberal Arts. John Roche, right, associate professor of English, answers questions from Jan Dvorak, a first-year student in the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.

Twenty RIT decision makers spent three days and two nights at the RIT Inn & Conference Center, Global Village and Perkins Green apartments for The REAL RIT Challenge, sponsored by Student Government. The challenge was to master campus transportation—learning how to read shuttle bus schedules to arrive on campus on time, and to get to off-campus locations such as Wegmans, Park Point and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Here, a group waits to board a bus to take them to their assigned destination on Jan. 20.

Twenty RIT decision makers spent three days and two nights at the RIT Inn & Conference Center, Global Village and Perkins Green apartments for The REAL RIT Challenge, sponsored by Student Government. The challenge was to master campus transportation—learning how to read shuttle bus schedules to arrive on campus on time, and to get to off-campus locations such as Wegmans, Park Point and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. The group gathered on Jan. 19 to receive information packets and have dinner.

Elizabeth Thabet, a first-year student in CIAS, learns about volunteer opportunities at an event hosted by RIT’s Intervarsity Christian Fellowship on Jan. 18.

The RIT American Sign Language and Deaf Studies Community Center opened with a ribbon cutting on Jan. 19. It is a resource for community, national and international outreach activities that enrich and celebrate achievements of the deaf community and fosters interaction among deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing colleagues.

Kim Murray, right, demonstrates a move in his wellness class, kickboxing. RIT’s Center for Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation’s Wellness Program offers numerous classes such as yoga, dance, cardio conditioning, pilates and more.

James Winebrake, a noted transportation and energy policy scholar, has been named dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology. Winebrake will develop and implement the college’s strategic plan and lead RIT’s research and education initiatives in the humanities, social sciences and performing/fine arts.

Judging for the second annual New York Ice Wine Competition took place Jan. 14 at Henry’s restaurant. Here, Abby Holland, a fourth-year food management major, and Tom Small, a fourth-year criminal justice major, prepare for the event, which was coordinated by Lorraine Hems, lecturer, and students in the School of International Hospitality and Service Innovation in RIT’s College of Applied Science and Technology. The New York Ice Wine Festival is Feb. 5 at Casa Larga Vineyard.

RIT history professor Richard Newman stands at the gravesite of famed activist and orator Frederick Douglass in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery. Newman is conducting a workshop series sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities that seeks to better educate K-12 history teachers on the influence of 19th century social reform movements on modern politics, culture and society. The series will include a tour of Mount Hope and an examination of the Douglass papers at the University of Rochester.