Left photo: Dean Martin and Dr.Vijayabanu Udayashankar, Sr. Assistant Professor of Psychology at VIT. Right photo: Mutual support and collaboration can make amazing things grow. 

As we have launched into the spring semester, I’m reflecting on the privilege of traveling to Chennai, India, to attend a summit on artificial intelligence organized by the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT). The hospitality of the campus was like none I’ve ever experienced, and the discussions and enthusiasm for collaboration was inspiring.

I eagerly anticipate the opportunity to collaborate further with the faculty at VIT and to introduce them to our colleagues in the College of Liberal Arts. I also mention this here because in interactive sessions with the Indian students, the first questions asked of all the RIT Deans were about our College of Liberal Arts programs. 

This experience not only emphasized the global reach of RIT but also highlighted the strength of what we are offering in the college. Another sign of our strength, as highlighted in this newsletter, is that our graduates not only achieve financial success but also make meaningful contributions to their communities, including the RIT community.

Our distinguished alums Julie Tiddbit Feldman and Shane Feldman are exceptional examples of this as well as the College of Liberal Arts grads who were such a large percentage of those recognized recently on the Rochester Business Journal 40 Under 40 List. 

As always, this semester we have a lot of work to do as a college to continuing growing and achieving new goals, but this work feels less daunting and more heartening when we reflect on how far we have come and what we have already accomplished.

To kick off the AI conference, the VIT founder and Chancellor Dr. Govindasamy Viswanathan quoted Henry Ford “Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success.”

I look forward to us working together this semester as a college this semester. 
 
— Kelly Norris Martin, Ph.D., Dean of the RIT College of Liberal Arts 

Co-led by Museum Studies Program Director Juilee Decker and the RIT Xerox chair in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, the Cultural Heritage Imaging, Preservation, and Research Project is among a select set of five projects supported by RIT’s new Vertically Integrated Project Initiative.

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Linguists face a resource gap for studying visual prosody and its grammatical and emotional functions in sign languages, and for creating AI systems capable of processing visual prosody. Cecilia Alm and Allison Fitch, College of Liberal Arts faculty members affiliated with RIT’s Ph.D. program in Cognitive Science, aim to fill that gap through Deaf scientist-centered research.

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Four College of Liberal Arts grads were among those recognized recently on the RBJ 40 Under 40 List. Congratulations goes to Albert A. Blankley (science, technology, and public policy, Collin Dian (public policy), Jazzmyn M. Ivery-Robinson (political science), and Ryan McDonald (criminal justice). 

Photo by Nikki Lombardo

80,000+ CDs and vinyl discs are in the WITR music library. Thanks to the efforts of COLA students Riley Mason and Caitlin McCabe, they’re now better documented and cataloged.

Photo by Traci Wescott

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Congratulations to Julie Tiddbit Feldman and Shane Feldman, COLA's 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients. Their journeys began here at RIT and led them to become tireless champions of career opportunities for Deaf individuals and Children of Deaf Adults.

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Irshad Altheimer, Ellen M. Granberg Endowed Professor, was the keynote speaker at Let Freedom Ring, an annual event commemorating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Altheimer’s talk was titled, “An Unjust Burden: Examining Disparities in the Criminal Justice System.”

Photo by Carlos Ortiz

Emma Kane, a third-year public policy student from Brighton, N.Y., has spent the past year working at the Deaf Health Laboratory, led by the mentors at the Deaf Health Care and Biomedical Sciences Hub (Deaf Hub) at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Photo by Scott Hamilton

Read about Emma’s research and public policy interests >

RIT’s School of Performing Arts presents A Chorus Line, March 27-30, 7:30-9:30 p.m., at the Sklarsky Glass Box Theater, SHED. Directed by Assistant Professor Christopher Ryan and set on the bare stage of a Broadway theater, A Chorus Line is centered on seventeen Broadway dancers auditioning for spots in the oft overlooked, but essential, chorus.

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Favorite music: Alternative rock. I’m usually singing along to Shinedown or Bad Omens in the car. 

Shameless brag: I can parallel park 98% perfectly!

Scariest thing you ever did and would you do it again? I moved to Rochester from The Bronx. I would absolutely do it again. My life has taken a different route than I originally moved up here for, but I am the person today because of the leap I took. I can’t imagine my life any other way.

Advice for younger you: Don’t doubt yourself so much. You are stronger than you know.

On your perfect day off, you’re most likely to be found: Since it's cold right now you would find me at Lamberton Conservatory in Highland Park. Drinking coffee, sitting among all the pretty plants. Watching the quail and tortoises while writing or reading.

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Contemporary Liberal Arts for a Complex Digital Age. 

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