News by Topic: Experiential Learning

The best white hat cybersecurity students will work to phish and exploit their way to a championship trophy at the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC) global finals Jan. 13–15. The event is the culmination of the world’s largest offense-based collegiate cybersecurity competition, hosted by RIT.

The NSF awarded RIT more than $588,000 over the next five years to further implement and assess a course-based undergraduate research experience based on the Biochemistry Authentic Science Inquiry Laboratory (BASIL) project led by RIT.

RIT will receive $2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to update and expand its Semiconductor Fabrication Lab to accommodate research in semiconductor technologies and prepare the workforce for the growing domestic microelectronics manufacturing industry. The funding was included as part of the fiscal year 2023 omnibus funding package.

Microsystems engineering Ph.D. student Katelynn Fleming is hard at work making new discoveries on the moon. But her ultimate goal is to use technology to help all of us on Earth. Fleming recently won a 2022 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) award and will work at NASA centers as part of the visiting technologist experiences.

RIT recently became one of the inaugural academic partners in the BrainChip University AI Accelerator Program. As part of the partnership, RIT’s computer engineering program will receive hardware as well as lecture modules for classes detailing how the novel chips can be programmed and used to provide neuromorphic computing solutions to real-world problems.

The K-12 University Center at RIT& runs the Apprenticeships and Fellowships division of the Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP), helping high school students through post-doctoral students find positions at research labs and centers affiliated with the U.S. Army and with universities across the U.S.

Plug Power Inc., a leading provider of turnkey hydrogen solutions for the global green hydrogen economy, is partnering with RIT to provide scholarship support to a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in engineering, sustainability, and the sciences. The first Plug Graduate Scholarship was awarded this year to Mamta Choudhary, an industrial and systems engineering MS student from India.

The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) and the renovated Wallace Library will reopen in less than a year. Work has begun to schedule the fall semester classes that will be held for the first time in the SHED complex, and Joe Loffredo, RIT associate vice president for Academic Affairs and registrar, is leading the effort to assign the classrooms in Wallace Library.

Developed and taught by Assistant Professor Peter Pincus, the course Josiah Wedgewood’s Legacy is a unique meld of art history, philosophy, and ceramics education and encourages students of all majors to explore and learn freely through experimentation and trial and error.

Members of the RIT Board of Trustees and President Munson recently took a walking tour of the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED). The $120 million complex stretches from Wallace Library to Monroe Hall and will include the Brooks H. Bower Maker Showcase, the Sklarsky Glass Box Theater, and music and dance studios. The SHED’s focus on hands-on learning extends to the 27 new classrooms—five extra-large learning spaces designed for active learning and 22 regular-sized flexible classrooms in the renovated Wallace Library. 

A recent trip to a cancer center in Boston helped astrophysicists from RIT's Center for Detectors reach a key milestone in their mission to develop advanced CMOS image sensors for future NASA space missions.

Students entering their first year of college face many unknowns. But a unique program at RIT helps new students learn more about college life, their peers, and themselves.