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RIT’s Class of 2020 is getting a bonus opportunity after last week’s virtual conferral of degrees — a ceremony in the video game Minecraft that will allow them to virtually walk across the graduation stage, receive a diploma from “Minecraft Munson” and take a photo with the Tiger statue.

Watch Madeline Gibbs give her 2020 undergraduate student delegate commencement speech.

Friday’s celebration of the Class of 2020 certainly cannot replace the atmosphere of a traditional commencement, which RIT plans to host on campus when it’s deemed safe. But many of graduates say they won’t let the pandemic, or the circumstances surrounding the virtual celebration, define them or their feelings about their time at RIT. (Pictured: Bradley Speck, who will finish his classes online this summer, has a job waiting for him at GE Aviation in Cincinnati, where he completed four co-ops.)

For more than 50 years, the New York State Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) has provided academic support, financial assistance, and advocacy for eligible students who would otherwise be excluded from higher education due to academic and economic disadvantage.

Saunders offers several scholarships to help you cut the cost of your graduate degree. Take a look at our list of upcoming scholarships!

KayLee Steiner knows her way around a research laboratory. Her extensive undergraduate research experience made her an appealing candidate when she began applying to Ph.D. programs. After receiving offers from top-notch graduate programs including Duke, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and others, she will pursue her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine.

Just because computing security student Jack McKenna is graduating, that doesn’t mean he’s going to stop learning. In his new job as a cybersecurity researcher at MITRE, McKenna, will constantly be on the lookout for new ways to use computing security techniques in order to help strengthen the nation’s cyber defenses.

Alyssa Owens is contributing new ways to diagnose breast cancer and Poornima Kalyanram has discovered how fluorescent molecules might help to identify diseased cells. Karen Soule and Fatemeh Shah-Mohammadi are part of breakthrough work in developing carbon nanotubes and cognitive radio networks—advances in technology that will power tomorrow’s electronic devices. All four are on track to graduate with a Ph.D. in engineering.

Juho Choi '20 (Illustration) was commissioned to paint a mural and was accepted into the Society of Illustrators' annual Student Scholarship Competition. 

Our Q&A with President Nick Renzoni gives the highlights of the season.

The international honorary chapter Eta Sigma Delta (ESD) recognized the hard work of five Saunders Hospitality students this week

A multidisciplinary team of first-year students has been working to develop an imaging system that can reveal information hidden in historical documents for their Innovative Freshmen Experience project-based course. But with the shift to remote classes, the students left campus with the device nearly complete. Although disappointed, they shifted focus to the opportunities the new situation would create.