Open@RIT


Open@RIT
The University's Open Programs Office
Contacts
Director: Stephen Jacobs, sj at mail dot rit dot edu
Slack Workspace: openrit.slack.com
Book a meeting with me: https://calendly.com/ritsj
Open@RIT is a Key Research Center of the University and serves as the Open Programs Office for the University. It is part of the Office of the Vice President of Research.
Open@RIT is dedicated to fostering the collaborative engine of Open across the University for Faculty, Staff and Students. Its goals are to discover, and grow, the footprint of RIT’s impact on all things Open including, but not limited to, Open Source Software, Open Data, Open Hardware, Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons licensed efforts, what we like to refer to in aggregate as Open Work.
Its charter was approved by the Provost in June of 2020 and it was established under the Office of the Vice-President of Research in August of 2020. We're coming to a number of college-wide meetings this Fall semester. Want a preview of the talk before we get to yours? Had to miss the meeting? View the slides.
About
The roots of Open@RIT are based in our twelve years of FOSS education for undergraduate students which includes...
- RIT’s courses and Minor in Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture,
- The experiential education programs of FOSS@MAGIC (formerly FOSS@RIT)
- Our Co-Op program LibreCorps.
The goal of Open@RIT is to be able to provide similar support for the Open Work already pursued by RIT Faculty and Staff, and to mentor those interested in getting started in it.
In November of 2019, Jacobs wrote a white paper for the Vice President of Research and the Provost describing the role of an Open Source Programs Office in industry and what a similar effort might do for RIT.
The paper resulted in an invitation by the Administration to hold a series of exploratory meetings with faculty and staff to gauge interest.
Fifty faculty and staff from 37 units across campus RSVP’d to the first meeting (pre-COVID) and twenty participated (post-COVID) in the creation of a “wish list” document suggesting what Open@RIT might do. Much of Open@RIT’s charter, approved by the Provost in June of 2020, was influenced by that “wish list.”
Open@RIT firmly believes in the FOSS maxim of “release early, release often.” Our website will reflect that as well, so come back regularly, especially during our first year.
Latest News
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February 26, 2021
RIT/NTID’s ‘World Around You’ platform chosen for Inclusive Education award
World Around You, a multilingual platform created by a team at NTID, was selected as the winner of the Inclusive Education award by the mEducation Alliance. The goal of World Around You, or WAY, is to increase global literacy for deaf children by providing greater access to sign languages, early-grade reading materials, vocabulary, reading instruction, and digital games.
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December 19, 2020
We Must Tear Down the Barriers That Impede Scientific Progress
Scientific American highlights Open@RIT, RIT's open programs office, as a notable example of embracing “open science.”
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November 13, 2020
Open@RIT receives Sloan Foundation grant to support open work across the university
RIT’s open programs office has received a nearly $500,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to measure and strengthen support of the faculty and staff who do work in the open community, including open source software, open data, open hardware, open educational resources, Creative Commons licensed work, open research, and other open work.
People
Director
Stephen Jacobs is a professor with the School of Interactive Games and Media and an interdisciplinary scholar who works in several different areas that often overlap including Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture. Digital Humanities, Game Design and History and Interactive Narrative. He also holds the position of Visiting Scholar at The Strong National Museum of Play. His Open Work has been funded by The Ford Foundation, UNICEF Innovation, Red Hat Inc, Northern Telecom and AT&T. Professor Jacobs received the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentoring for 2019-2020.
Assistant Director
Mike Nolan serves as the Assistant Director of Open@RIT. A former RIT alum, he went on to work in the tech industry at companies such as GIPHY and Mozilla. He then proceeded to work in the humanitarian aid sector abroad (Jordan & UK) for organizations such as the International Rescue Committee and UNICEF. He continues to pursue his mission of technology and social good by helping lead RIT's open programs center.
LibreCorps Co-op Students

Quinn Foster
Writer
Digital Humanities and Social Sciences - Spring 2022

Julia Hawley
UX Designer
Industrial Design - Spring 2021

Rahul Jaiswal
User Experience Designer
MS in Human-Computer Interaction - Dec 2021

Shanée Gordon
Writer
MFA Animation - December 2021

Suhas Chikkanaravangala Vijayakumar
Full Stack Developer
MS Computer Science - Dec 2021
Advisory Board

Matthew Bernius
Principle User Researcher
Code for America
BS New Media Publishing, RIT, 1996

Deb Nicholson
Interim Director
The Open Source Initiative

Silona Bonewald
Executive Director
IEEE Standards Association

Mel Chua
ABD, Purdue, School of Engineering Education

Ihudiya Finda Ogbonnaya-Ogburu
HCI Researcher (PhD candidate), University of Michigan School of Information
BS, Information Technology, RIT 2010

Remy DeCausemaker
BS & MS, School of Independent Study, RIT '08, '13

Nithya Ruff
Board Director & Head of Open Source
Comcast, Inc

Justin W. Flory
FOSS Technical Advisor
UNICEF Innovation
B.S. Networking & Systems Administration, Minor, Free & Open Source Software & Free Culture, RIT 202

Justin Sherrill
Developer, DragonFly BSD
Information Technology Masters, 2002.

Wilfried Hounyo
Software Engineer
Zendesk, INc
BS in Computer Science, RIT 2019

Kyle Suero
Application Security Engineer III
Reddit
BS, Computing Security, RIT, 2019

Jenn Kotler
UX Designer
Space Telescope Science Institute
BS Medical Illustration, RIT 2014

Tom Callaway
Principal Open Source Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

Ruth Suehle
TiDirector, Software Engineering, Global,Red Hat

Chris Aniszczyk
Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Native Computing Foundation
Vice President, Developer Relations, The Linux Foundation

Erin McKean
Docs Advocacy Program Manager
Google Open Source Programs Office
picture credit: CC-BY Kirill Ignatieff (http://www.igkirill.com/)
Events
Recent:
10th Annual and First Virtual Election Night Hackathon. Tuesday, November 3, 2020.
An animated and active event was held with speakers Katherine May, chief performance officer of the city of Rochester, Matthew Bernius, principal user researcher at Code for America’s Clear My Record project, Jacob Green, founder of Mosslabs.io, who talked about the city of Baltimore's project in civic tech.
National Civic Day of Hacking Virtual Hackathon. Saturday, September 12th, Noon-6
We’ll be partnering with the City of Rochester and the City Library to do some local asset mapping for Rochester. No previous experience required. The event is primarily asynchronous and a full six hour commitment is not required. To learn more about the effort, click the link below!
Information about, and sign up form for the Rochester virtual cohort
Lightning Talk for the State of the Source Summit September 9th @ 3:10 p.m.
We’ll be presenting a lightning talk on Open@RIT as part of this event. Catch just our presentation, or enjoy the full two-day event for free. (Though the OSI would appreciate it if you take the opportunity to contribute on the registration page if you are able.)
Resources
Knowledge Base: Open@RIT will provide a curated set of resource links for Faculty, Staff and Students. This very alpha prototype illustrates our thinking as to the type of information we’ll be looking to share. There will be a link here in the future for the community ro recommend additions to this resource.
Research
The research effort that indirectly led to Open@RIT, and directly led to our recent Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant (see more in "News" above) was Conceptual Mismatches, a qualitative study of PyPI that was funded as part of the first Critical Digital Infrastructure Research program, supported by the Ford Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The work was presented as part of a research panel held by the Ford and Sloan foundations on August 20th, 2020.
University-Wide Directory of Open Work and Research on Open
One of our goals is to build a listing/directory/database of Open Work and Research on Open being done by RIT Faculty and Staff. Once we get one up and running, you’ll find a link here to register your projects with the goal of helping you find resources and network with other folks on campus to network and collaborate with.