News by Topic: Diversity

RIT’s College of Liberal Arts began the academic year under new leadership. Dean Anna Stenport joined RIT from Georgia Institute of Technology’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts in September following a nationwide search. Stenport is a professor of communication and an expert in transnational cinema and media, modern literature and drama, and visual and cultural studies, with a focus on the Arctic and Nordic regions.

The Military Friendly Schools list is created each year based on extensive research using public data sources for more than 8,800 schools nationwide, input from student veterans, and responses to the proprietary, data-driven Military Friendly Schools survey from participating institutions.

The spring university-wide Career Fair will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday in the Gordon Field House. Some 3,000 students are expected to attend.

RIT Dubai President Yousef Al Assaf recently sat down for an interview with Bob Finnerty, RIT’s associate vice president of communications, to discuss the new RIT Dubai campus and his vision for RIT Dubai.

Barbara Lohse, head of RIT’s Wegmans School of Health and Nutrition, hopes to reach 10,000 New Yorkers with free resources promoting healthy nutrition and lifestyle tools that have been tested and shown to be effective.

The Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences has a new initiative aimed at increasing its emphasis on diversity at all levels in the college. The GCCIS Diversity Initiatives office will support underrepresented populations, Women in Computing, and diversity and inclusion efforts.

Joshua Rashaad McFadden, an internationally recognized assistant professor of photography in RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, was chosen to visually capture the story of the first decade of Black Lives Matter in New York Magazine’s February issue.

One highlight of the RIT-Rochester Prep High School Partnership is the annual capstone showcase that spotlights student-professor collaborations. Their diverse projects in photojournalism, antibiotic resistance, 3D printing and fabrication, and chemical engineering gave the students experience on a college campus and the confidence of completing undergraduate-level material.

After the contested 2020 presidential election, the tumult of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and the national protests following the killing of George Floyd, RIT looked inward to see how to address the political climate with the student body. The result is an increased effort to create a campus culture of free speech and to give students the skills to participate in civil discourse respectfully and productively long after they graduate.

RIT students, faculty, and staff are invited to discuss non-partisan solutions to some of the most complex civic and political problems of our day as part of the Horizons program. The first, with the topic, “Youth and Opportunity: What Should We Do for Future Generations to Thrive?” is scheduled for Feb. 9.

Cecilia Alm, an associate professor in RIT’s College of Liberal Arts, was awarded nearly $2 million by the National Science Foundation to lead a team of RIT faculty addressing a lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence research community and gaps in AI curricula.

As an expert in microfluidic devices—tiny labs able to decipher bioparticles—Blanca Lapizco-Encinas and her research partners uncovered a mystery in how these particles can be better differentiated. As she has moved her own research forward, she is influencing a new generation of scientists to do the same.