News by Topic: Staff

The show must go on – even if it means virtually. While performing arts offerings at RIT may look and feel differently from how they normally operate, RIT is committed to making sure they are available in a healthy and safe manner.

RIT is requiring all students, faculty, and staff to monitor their health for COVID-19 symptoms. The new policy will help protect the health and safety of the community at RIT and in the Greater Rochester area during the ongoing pandemic. Starting July 27, the university will launch the RIT Daily Health Screen website and call-in option.

In a typical year, RIT normally sees more than 17,000 students, alumni, and parents gather on campus to experience Brick City Homecoming and Family Weekend. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, events are being designed to allow alumni to participate virtually.

RIT’s MAGIC Center and Vicarious Visions (VV), a game studio well-known for some of the industry’s most iconic franchises, have signed a partnership agreement that will include new collaborations and scholarship opportunities for students in RIT's Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and College of Art and Design.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, RIT’s Division of Diversity and Inclusion wanted to create a way for faculty and staff to connect with people from different backgrounds despite the limitations that come with physical distancing. In April, they launched the “What’s Your Diversity” program, a weekly storytelling and dialogue hour held via Zoom that allowed RIT faculty and staff to share how diversity impacts their lives.

The K-12 University Center at RIT is offering virtual summer camp programming this year centered around the popular roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons. A series of weeklong workshops for students in fifth to 12th grades will run July 6 through Aug. 14.

Prospective students who may be thinking of attending RIT can now take a campus tour from their home with a new mobile app that features augmented reality with 360-degree videos.

Jo Ellen Pinkham has been named associate vice president and chief human resource officer at RIT. She will join the university in August. Pinkham comes to RIT from Nazareth College, where she most recently served as associate to the president and coordinated Nazareth’s presidential search, COVID-19 response and fall planning task force.

WXXI’s “Connections” program features Donathan Brown, assistant provost and AVP for Faculty Diversity and Recruitment.

WXXI’s “Connections” program features Jonathan Ntheketha, associate director of student success and development in the Multicultural Center for Academic Success.

As social distancing requirements forced distanced learning, students across the country suddenly had to consider where they would be doing that learning. The estimated 6,000 RIT students who lived on campus in a residence hall or apartment needed to collect, store or ship personal items. And staff members from RIT Housing, Residence Life and Student Affairs were faced with an array of unique situations.

LaVerne McQuiller Williams, senior associate dean of RIT’s College of Liberal Arts, has been named interim COLA dean effective June 1. McQuiller Williams succeeds Dean James Winebrake, who is leaving RIT on June 30 to become provost and vice chancellor of Academic Affairs at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.