Photo Spotlights

RIT’s annual holiday music concert featured performances by ensembles from the RIT Music Program and the RIT Gospel Ensemble on Dec. 13.

President Bill Destler led a delegation of RIT leaders in Japan this week. Pictured here are Destler, Alan Hurwitz, president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf; James DeCaro, director of NTID’s Postsecondary Education Network (PEN) International; Lisa Cauda, RIT vice president for development and alumni relations, and officials from Tsukuba College of Technology/Tianjin Technical College for the Deaf. For more on the visit: www.rit.edu/news.

RIT celebrated the grand opening of its island in the virtual world, Second Life, with a “ribbon cutting” Dec. 10. Guests were invited to explore the island on computer stations set up in the SAU complete with immersive projection systems for 360 degree viewing.

At the 8th annual Electronic Waste Recycling Day, the Student Environmental Action League collected electronic equipment from RIT departments and colleges for recycling or refurbishing. This year, the team anticipates an increase due to the television changeover from analog to digital technology.

Attendees of PR Now!, a full-day symposium on Dec. 8, heard from public relations industry experts on topics such as branding, crisis management, social networking, corporate citizenship and social responsibility. Presenters included Bill McKee, of Xerox Corp., who discussed “The Problem with Being a Household Name.” The event was sponsored by RIT’s Department of Communication and School of Hospitality and Service Management and was hosted by the RIT chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America.

Rachel DiNunzio, a second-year illustration major and Buffalo Bills fan, designed a logo for a grassroots marketing campaign to keep the NFL team in Buffalo long-term. DiNunzio’s brother and uncle are the marketing masterminds behind the initiative and recruited the Williamsville native to come up with a logo. Their goal is to raise awareness about the team’s future through the creation of a Web site, billsinbuffalo4ever.com, an online petition and selling T-shirts and bumper stickers.

RIT’s Gallery r participated in the annual Park Avenue Winter Festival on Dec. 4. Several RIT students from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences put on a display of their ice sculpting skills in front of the Park Avenue gallery. Here, ice chips fly as Erin Zellefrow, a second-year MFA student, attacks a block of ice.

Fred Smith, RIT’s institute secretary, will retire Dec. 31 after 37 years of service. Here, Smith shares memories with guests during his official send-off in the Student Alumni Union Davis Room, Dec. 2. Note an earlier photo, in the background, of Smith in one of his previous offices.

Joseph Fornieri, RIT associate professor of political science, has received a 2009 Teaching Fulbright Award from the William J. Fulbright Program. Fornieri will spend this winter at Charles University in Prague teaching courses in constitutional rights and liberties and American political thought. He will also serve as a Fulbright cultural ambassador, conducting research that compares Czech democratic ideas and institutions with those of the United States. Fornieri is a noted scholar on the political philosophy of Abraham Lincoln. He is a member of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and his fifth book, Lincoln’s America: 1809-1865, has just been published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Alan Singer, College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, has a new exhibit of prints and paintings in the Arts & Cultural Council Gallery, 277 N. Goodman St., through Dec. 24. Wheel on Fire is one example of his mix media prints.

Through the assistance of U.S. Congressman Randy Kuhl, RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability was awarded $5 million from the Office of Naval Research to develop new transportation technologies that will increase energy efficiency and reduce the costs of military vehicles.

Bill Hampel, chief economist at Credit Union National Association in Washington, D.C., was one of several guest speakers at Filene Research Institute’s Consumer Financial Services Colloquium, sponsored by RIT’s E. Philip Saunders College of Business, Nov. 21. The daylong event was hosted by Credit Card Nation author Robert Manning, Saunders’ research professor and director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services.