Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education News

As part of RIT’s ongoing commitment to academic and cultural exchanges, several cohorts of international students, including those from Ireland, Germany, and Indonesia, visited campus this fall. The visits were spearheaded, in part, by RIT Global, which has developed partnerships with nearly 100 countries.

“Developing strengths in [worldbuilding] can help many types of professionals become better at what they do. Clearly, game designers, animators, and creative storytellers can benefit, but engineers, technologists, scientists, sociologists, and health care innovators, for example, can also because the process of envisioning and creating a world and all of its interactions can help test out ideas and inform solutions,” said Associate Professor (English) Trent Hergenrader, Ph.D., who will lead the new Center for Worldbuilding and Storytelling.

Rebekah Walker, a science, technology, and public policy master’s student and RIT staff member, traveled to Africa to research with the Rwandan ministry in charge of emergency management.

Essay written by Evan Selinger, professor of philosophy, published by The Boston Globe. (This content requires a subscription to view.)

Natali Valdez, assistant professor at Purdue University and Presidential Fellow at Yale University, will visit RIT to share her research on social and political factors surrounding maternal medical policy as the featured speaker for the 2023 Eugene H. Fram Signature Lecture in Critical Thinking.

Earlier this month, an interdisciplinary group of RIT alumni, academics, researchers, and public policy professionals met to discuss ethical and social issues related to emerging technology and its application during a day-long session sponsored and organized by The Liberty Fund and directed by RIT’s College of Liberal Arts Associate Dean Lauren Hall, Ph.D.

Political science and marketing double major Christopher Ferrari recently completed his co-op at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Ferrari, who is from Spencerport, N.Y., received the Kristine and John Simmons Public Policy Scholar Internship Fund to help make this co-op more affordable.

City Newspaper features Andrew Scott ’13 (advertising and public relations).

The College of Art and Design welcomes new hires to its faculty roster while longtime faculty Alex Lobos assumes a role as director of the School of Design.

The new undergraduate students come from 48 states (all but Iowa and Wyoming); Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; Guam; U.S. Virgin Islands; and 47 countries, with the largest contingent coming from India, Canada, and China. In addition, there are 927 new graduate students.

RIT is offering a new bachelor’s degree in neuroscience beginning this fall. The Bachelor of Science degree will focus on how the brain works and how to apply that knowledge to develop systems for new frontiers, such as advancing artificial intelligence, combating neurodegenerative diseases, and assisting those with learning disabilities.

Eva Navarro López has been named director of the School of Information in RIT’s Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.