News

As first-year and returning students gear up for the start of classes on Aug. 19, course schedules will look much different than in past years. This fall, schedules will include designations for RIT’s new instruction modes, including in-person, blended, split classes, and online.

COVID-19 has challenged the university to consider an even more creative academic portfolio with blended, online, split A/B, and flex class options. To prepare for in-person instruction, RIT has upgraded academic buildings and classrooms. And physical distancing and face coverings, required of faculty and students in classrooms, together provide some of the greatest protection against the spread of COVID-19.

RIT is developing an alert system that systematically defines levels of COVID-19 prevalence and transmission risk within our community. Each level will be associated with predetermined actions aimed at reducing risk during the coronavirus pandemic.

RIT’s Upward Bound summer program is providing area high school students a preview of life as a college student. This year, 24 students from the Leadership Academy for Young Men and Greece Olympia High School participated in the six-week enrichment program, held virtually for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Douglas Merrill, who inspired countless students during his 40-year tenure in the College of Science and the College of Health Sciences and Technology, has retired. He developed the Premedical Advisory Program and created the Center for Bioscience Education and Technology. And he retires with numerous honors recognizing his outstanding teaching and commitment to diversity and inclusion.

RIT will use an unusual technique to search for surges in coronavirus cases before those infected even begin displaying symptoms. The university will test wastewater on campus for traces of COVID-19 twice weekly beginning Aug. 5 to get early indications if coronavirus is spreading in campus housing and other areas of campus.

As the RIT community prepares to return to campus this fall, an environment of physical distancing and reduced classroom occupancies has added a new component to the course scheduling process. Throughout the summer, every college has worked to rebuild the fall schedule to accommodate the unique requirements of the fall semester.

A study abroad experience for RIT’s College of Engineering Technology (CET) students took place over Zoom when the class connected with peers from Hochschule Mittweida University of Applied Sciences in central Germany.

In a biology lab in Gosnell Hall, Professor André Hudson has been spending hours this summer testing products to see whether they are effective at killing and filtering microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The effort is part of RIT’s Infrastructure and Health Technologies task force, which is putting changes in place to make RIT’s campus as safe and clean as possible in the fall.

The K-12 University Center at RIT is offering virtual summer camp programming this year centered around the popular roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons. A series of weeklong workshops for students in fifth to 12th grades will run July 6 through Aug. 14.

Two visionaries in the fields of advertising, marketing and communications have been named co-recipients of the 2020 Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award, presented by RIT’s Saunders College of Business. Sue Butler and Tracy Till are the first joint female recipients in the award’s 35-year history.

President David Munson and Provost Ellen Granberg are announcing an accelerated fall academic calendar, with the semester beginning Aug. 19, all in-person classes concluding by Nov. 24 and final examinations to be administered online.