News by Topic: Doing Good

This year’s recognition of RIT’s Alfred L. Davis Distinguished Public Service Award winners will be a double celebration, as faculty and student recipients from 2020 and 2021 are honored April 13. Luane Davis Haggerty will receive the 2021 Four Presidents Distinguished Public Service Award, and Bhuvish Mehta will receive the 2021 Bruce R. James ’64 Distinguished Public Service Award. Thomas Warfield was awarded the 2020 Four Presidents Distinguished Public Service Award, and Çlirim Sheremeti was awarded the 2020 Bruce R. James ’64 Distinguished Public Service Award.

Anika Griffiths, a fourth-year sociology and anthropology major and Student Government Women’s Senator, has been selected to give a spoken-word performance at RIT’s Moving Forward: Suffrage Past, Present and Future symposium on April 8.

Essay by Amanda Ziemann ’10, ’11 MS (applied mathematics), a remote sensing scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, published by Space.com.

WHAM-TV features Noah Wallace, a fourth-year computing security student who helped develop a partnership with Jewish Senior Life.

When the incidence of the COVID-19 virus increased locally this winter, clinical test labs experienced larger than normal volumes of specimens—and higher expectations of rapid turnaround of results. Industrial and systems engineering (ISE) alumni and former faculty members helped a local lab meet those goals.

Essay by Sophia Maggelakis, dean of the College of Science, published by the Rochester Beacon.

School of Individualized Study student Harrison Canning and his business partner, Colin Fausnaught, a 2019 software engineering graduate from RIT, formed the BCI Guys, which stands for brain-computer interface technology. They recently launched an online educational series to lower the barrier of entry and inspire others to join the field.

JayShaud Potter has taken advantage of studying at two university campuses, earning multiple degrees. His next adventure is the world of entrepreneurship, where he is developing a smart pillow to help the deaf community. 

With a global pandemic on our hands, a group of professors and student volunteers came together to build a software system that helps people get vaccinated against COVID-19.

An endowment dedicated to a beloved Black History Month tradition at NTID has been fully funded. Thanks to the generosity of the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, the Johnnie “JB” Brown Black History Month Celebration Endowment Fund will ensure the popular Black History Month Potluck Luncheon will continue.

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.  

When students in RIT’s hospitality and tourism management clubs realized COVID-19 restrictions would prevent them from executing their annual Valentine’s Day fundraiser dinner, they decided to redirect their efforts to give back to the community instead.