Denishea Ortiz and Thomas Faga to receive 2024 Alfred Davis Awards
An executive director who leads a marketing team that supports RIT Housing RIT Dining and a Marine Corps veteran who is receiving his mechanical engineering technology degree next month have been chosen to receive prestigious public service awards from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Denishea Ortiz, executive director for marketing and communications for RIT’s Finance and Administration division, has been named the 2024 recipient of RIT’s Four Presidents Distinguished Public Service Award.
Thomas Faga, a mechanical engineering technology student and president of the RIT Veterans Club, was named this year’s recipient of the Bruce R. James ’64 Distinguished Service Award for his service at RIT and in the community.
They will be recognized at a ceremony at 4 p.m. April 11 in RIT’s University Gallery, followed by a reception at 5 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to all.
“I am in total shock,” Ortiz said of her receiving the award. “I’m super humbled and grateful that my nominators thought of me being deserving for this prestigious award. I just do what I do because it’s in my heart to do so.”
A native of Cincinnati, Ortiz was the first in her family to attend college and the first in her family to move away from home.
“There’s a lot of struggle being the first in my family to do a lot of things, and seeing my cousins in a different situation than I’m in,” she said. “My mother helped allow me to follow my dreams. Sometimes people need a helping hand from others. I want to be that light for others.”
Ortiz graduated from RIT in 2004 with a degree in international business from Saunders College of Business, and began working at RIT in 2014 as director of strategic marketing and retail product management.
At RIT, Ortiz now assists the Finance and Administration division with marketing support. Her duties include overseeing branding standards, drafting communications and creating marketing materials, analyzing web, social media, and point-of-sale statistics, and mentoring employees.
She has been involved in area organizations for decades, wanting to make a positive difference in the community. She has been an advocate for women, mentoring first-year interns, teaching financial literacy, hosting branding workshops, and participating in women panels on various topics.
Ortiz volunteers her time with several organizations including the Commission on Racial and Structural Equity, Causewave Community Partners, and the Rochester Area Community Foundation, where she is marketing chair and serves on the board.
She also serves as the RIT chapter adviser and board of trustee member to Sigma Lambda Upsilon/Señoritas Latinas Unidas Sorority. She founded the Rochester chapter when she was a student.
Ortiz works as a fitness instructor at the YMCA and has raised $20,000 since 2016 for the annual Stroll for Strong Kids in memory of her son, Gian. Ortiz and her husband, Orlando, have also donated more than 1,500 books, many by authors of color, to the Golisano Children’s Hospital and area elementary schools to promote diversity in literacy.
In addition, they find a school and age-appropriate grade that Gian may have attended and buy books and school supplies for students in three or four classes, with the help of Rochester Education Foundation. This year, students in Rochester’s School #9 are the benefactors, and Gian’s older brother, Esaias, 10, recently read a book to a class there.
The Davis Award comes with $2,500 which will be donated to charities of the recipient’s choice. Ortiz said it will be shared this year between Causewave Community Partners, the IBERO-American Action League, the Urban League of Rochester, and the Rochester Area Community Foundation.
Simeon Banister, president and CEO of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, said he feels “exceptionally fortunate to work with someone who brings such a wealth of professional expertise to their volunteer work, and Denishea is truly one of those rare gems.”
Faga, a native of Painted Post, N.Y., served in the Marine Corps from 2002 to 2015. He enrolled at RIT in 2021 and will graduate next month with a degree in mechanical engineering technology.
He served as president of the RIT Veterans Club, which was formed in 2011, and works in RIT’s Office of Veteran Student Success.
“I certainly don’t want to be the one highlighted, but hopefully this award can help bring opportunities to highlight some of the student veterans on campus and the issues and challenges veterans face,” he said.
While at RIT, Faga said he strived to get more recognition for student veterans on campus and have them become more included on campus. He would like to see student veterans be recognized as a Representative Student Organization, or to simply enable them to have priority registration for classes, which is useful because many of them have families and often young children to supervise or arrange for daycare.
One of the highlights of the Veterans Club was the holiday Toys for Tots drive. “We needed a box truck this year to gather all the toys,” he said. The club, along with local ROTC cadets, also volunteered to participate in Wreaths Across America, putting donated wreaths on service members’ graves in Webster Union Cemetery in December.
Veterans Club members and ROTC cadets, about 40 people in all, also helped clean the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on South Avenue. “It was a great feeling to bring that many people with us,” he said.
Along with his award comes $1,000 to designate to charities of his choice. The money will be split between the Sunny Mike Foundation, which helps local veterans, and the local Marine Corps Coordinating Council of Rochester, which manages the annual Toys for Tots drive, offers scholarships to U.S. Marine Corps and Naval reservists, and more.
“It has been great being able to connect with other veterans on campus and try to advocate for each other and help other service members come together,” he said. “I appreciate the opportunity to put student veterans in the limelight.”
After graduation, Faga, his wife, Tracie, and their sons, Dominic, 9, and Luca, 4, plan to move to North Carolina, where he was stationed for 10 years.
About the awards:
The Four Presidents Distinguished Public Service Award Fund was created by Alfred L. Davis on the occasion of the 65th year of his association with RIT, to commemorate the dedication of the four RIT presidents - Mark Ellingson, Paul Miller, M. Richard Rose, and Albert Simone - with whom he worked, in their service to the Rochester community. The award also recognizes a current member of the faculty or staff who, through his/her public service, mirrors the lives of the four presidents, who have been not only outstanding professionals but also caring members of the community.
The Bruce R. James ’64 Distinguished Public Service Award commemorates the public service of Bruce James, chairman emeritus of the RIT Board of Trustees recognizes an RIT student for exemplary public service in the community with hopes other students will engage in public service.
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- Senior project uses AI-powered tools to help local business expand across North AmericaWhile kids are out having fun, RIT software engineers are hard at work building the tech that helps families identify events and activities in their area. A team of software engineering students is completing a senior project with KidsOutAndAbout.com, an event curation platform that helps families find local events. The students are developing an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered system that will help the Rochester-based small business scale its operations and reach new communities. The collaboration is part of the software engineering program’s Senior Project—a capstone course where small teams tackle real-world software problems submitted by companies and organizations. Throughout two semesters, students work with a project sponsor to carry the project from inception through an entire software development lifecycle. The result is a ready-to-use functional software tool for the sponsor. “It’s a great experience to work with a small business and at every meeting we can truly feel the impact that our eventual product will have,” said Chris Shepard, a software engineering student team member who is from Cheshire, Conn. “It gives us a lot of context for how many businesses operate, which is knowledge we wouldn’t have gotten inside the classroom.” The experiential work is part of the software engineering Senior Project capstone course, which allows students to work on real challenges, apply their skills end-to-end, and deliver something meaningful for a sponsor organization. Since KidsOutAndAbout.com launched in 2001, all its calendar events have been manually input—mostly by the sponsoring organizations themselves. The regional calendars are then reviewed and supplemented by the site’s data team of seven employees based in Rochester. This labor-intensive process has limited the company’s ability to expand beyond its current 52 markets in the U.S. and Canada. The student team is creating a two-part solution. First, a custom web scraper collects pages from businesses’ websites. Then, an AI large language model trained by the students will determine whether webpages contain event information. Verified pages are routed to the KidsOutAndAbout.com content team for review, dramatically reducing the time required to find and post appropriate events. The second part of the system uses the Google Places API to identify new businesses in untapped geographic regions. “The API allows us to search for categories and locations,” said Shepard. “So, when they want to expand to a new region, they don’t need to manually try and find new businesses—the entire process is automatic.” For example, the new system was able to identify 600 new organizations in Anchorage, Alaska that had not yet been added to the website. This process, which used to take about a week of human searching, was accomplished in approximately two minutes. “Thanks to this student-led innovation, we’ll finally be able to extend our reach everywhere—not just major markets,” said Debra Ross, publisher and founder of KidsOutAndAbout.com. “What’s especially exciting is that the solution they’re developing will increase person-to-person connection between the creators of community experiences and their audiences—at a time when so many fear that AI replaces rather than enhances human connection.” The RIT team includes software engineering seniors Shepard, JD Bartholomew, Alec Haag, Edward Teutle, Eva Stoddard, Joe Wesnofske, and Jahmir Hinds. The team said that some of the biggest learning lessons have been on time management and developing unique workarounds to manage costs. The team has now entered the summer semester of the project and look forward to working directly with company to implement the system. “Our big goal this summer is to get everything up and running in the AWS cloud, make the AI model as accurate as possible, and work directly with the content management team to work out any bugs found in the user interface,” said Bartholomew, who is from Weston, Mass. “It’ll be busy, but we are looking forward to it.”
- Michael Peres reflects on his 39 years at RITAfter 39 years of teaching in RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, Professor Michael Peres says that he is most proud of the relationships he’s made with his students and colleagues over the years. As he looks toward retirement on June 30, he fondly recalls the memories he’s made on campus. Peres has made many contributions to the College of Art and Design and the larger RIT community since joining the university in 1986—and his time at RIT was marked by many “firsts.” Peres was a founding member of the RIT Big Shot team and worked on the first Big Shot in 1987. A book he co-produced, called Images from Science, was the first publication of the Cary Graphic Arts Press, now known as RIT Press. He also taught RIT’s first distance-learning course in photography, long before the advent of Zoom and other tools that make distance learning more seamless. Peres was the recipient of the RIT Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2003, which recognizes faculty members who excel at teaching and enhance student learning. He also received the College of Art and Design’s Gitner Prize and the Frank J. Romano Prize for Publishing Entrepreneurship. Another highlight of his career, he says, was serving as editor-in-chief for the Focal Encyclopedia of Photography 4th edition. Below are some reflections Peres shared about his time at RIT. How have you grown as an educator since you started at RIT? Peres joked that while he had two children at home, his campus family included the many students who sought his guidance and support over the years. Photo Credit: Michael Peres My teaching at the beginning of my career was very fact based. But with experience, I started to realize there were so many more important lessons that needed to come from my being in the classroom. Lessons about working with others, problem solving, critical thinking, and professional practices. It wasn’t just about the specific subject itself, but about the personal learning. Seeing the evolution from an 18-year-old starting college to earning a Ph.D. or M.D. or growing into leadership roles has been a great gift for me. But, I think I’ve learned more from my 39 years here than I might have taught. My fascination with photographing snowflakes was inspired by a student named Emily Marshall, who graduated in 2003. She saw an exhibition by Wilson Bentley, a snowflake photographer, and came back to campus saying she wanted to photograph a snowflake. I had never photographed a snowflake and, initially, I was a little hesitant. But I reached out to her the next day, and we set up a microscope in the breezeway between Booth and Gannett halls. It didn't work out at all, but we learned an awful lot. Now, over 20 years later, I am still doing it. What are some of your fondest memories connecting with RIT’s photography community through the Big Shot? Every Big Shot was an adventure, and it was a perpetual challenge to make Big Shot bigger, more interesting, and more inclusive every year. A truly notable moment was bringing the Big Shot to the Intrepid Museum. Going to New York City to talk with the management team of the Intrepid was exciting, but they told us we had to rent out the ship for $28,000 if we wanted to make a photo of the ship. We came back to Rochester like dogs with our tails between our legs but, with the help of Ed Lincoln (director of Alumni Relations in 1998), we were able to photograph the museum and we had this massive alumni afterparty. President Simone was there with the president of Fuji Film, and CNN featured us. After making the Big Shot photo at the Intrepid Museum on Oct. 28, 1999, CNN produced a story about the project and interviewed Peres and other members of the team. Another Big Shot that was exceptional was when we photographed the Royal Palace in Stockholm. The Big Shot photo became the national Swedish Christmas card for two years. I have a signed card from King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia. After our visit, they put lighting on the outside of the palace. They’d never seen the palace lit at night like it was lit for the Big Shot picture. It’s interesting to think that we inspired change at the Royal Palace. An interesting evolution we worked through was the transition from film to digital photography. In the earliest days of the Big Shot, we had to run home, develop the negatives, and then make prints. Then, we would run the prints to the television stations and the newspapers while they were still wet to try to get on the 11 p.m. news or in the morning paper. Hand delivering prints was a fun way to distribute our work. Now, we make a picture and 5 minutes after the picture is done, it's distributed all around the world. What are your post-RIT plans? I’m giving myself the year to not put any pressure on myself or make commitments. It feels nice to just dwell on what’s happened at RIT and celebrate the future. I’ve made photographs since 1972, so I have a massive collection of slides, negatives, digital files, prints, and all these things that need attention. I’m going to spend the first year figuring out what I want to do with those things. I have two beautiful grandchildren and we’re going to do some traveling. I’ll take my dog for long walks and hang out with him. I’m on a committee at the Eastman Museum that I go to monthly, and I volunteer for the Friends of the Public Market by designing their newsletter. I also volunteer at a nonprofit called InterVol and I go there to sort unused medical supplies and equipment that is redistributed to developing countries. I find great joy in contributing my time and energy to important work like that.
- Robert Pearson retires from microelectronic engineering programRobert Pearson helped make history when RIT began its microelectronic engineering program in the early 1980s. An RIT alumnus of the electrical engineering program and MicroE’s first faculty hire, Pearson reflected on some of that history—and his place in it—before retiring this summer after more than 40 years. Pearson started his RIT story with highlights that included following in the footsteps of his father, Milton ’64 (Imaging science), combining electrical engineering and imaging science and coming to campus in 1976 as a student-athlete. He took advantage of early co-op experiences at Fairchild Semiconductor International in Maine and later its R&D center in California. He eventually worked for the company after graduation, before bringing a combination of academics and industry skills to teaching. He saw great potential in the degree program, in the growing semiconductor industry, and RIT’s commitment to building what he would describe as a first-of-its-kind program, recognized by peer universities and industry for its skilled semiconductor graduates. How did you come to teach in the microelectronics engineering program? I started here in fall ’76 and played soccer. Before my first co-op I didn’t have a resume and went over to see sports information director, Roger Dykes. I made copies, sent it out, and got a co-op at Fairchild in Maine because Roger typed up my resume. When I came back, I had classes with Lynn Fuller in semiconductor physics and thick film integrated circuits. He said, ‘I’ve got some equipment here, do you want to try to make some transistors? Just come in and start working. But you’ve got to write it up as lab reports.’ A buddy and I made the first photo masks, capacitors, solar cells, and transistors in 1979. My master’s thesis was a formalized version of all those lab reports. It is basically what we teach in our sophomore course, Integrated Circuit Technology now. It has survived the test of time. I was working at Fairchild Semiconductors after graduation. When I visited RIT at Thanksgiving ’82, they had just started the microelectronics engineering program in September. Lynn Fuller, founder of the program, said, ‘I don’t have any faculty—it’s just me and 60 freshmen. Would you like to be a teacher?’ I asked, ‘When?’ He said, ‘January.’ So I went back to Maine, quit my job and moved back home with my wife. What are some significant milestones in the program you were involved with since it began? When I started teaching, we were in a couple of crowded rooms on the third floor of the engineering building. People were interested in the semiconductor field, and the country was very much interested in re-shoring—just like now. Lynn put together a proposal for a new building. I think the projected cost at the time was a measly $5 million. By 1985, we were ready to open the building, and who do we invite—Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit. And we gave him an honorary Ph.D. even before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Carlos Ortiz/RIT Robert Pearson has taught numerous lab courses and trainings. Some of his early lab notes and processes from the cleanroom during the time he was a student became the basis for some of the program materials used today. What are some of the similarities and differences of the industry and students, then and now? The industry in the early days of our program was very much aware of what decisions they made and how it affected their bottom line. If they found they were getting good hires from RIT, and it was helping them, they did their best to encourage us. That kept us on track for teaching what they wanted. When the semiconductor industry was still emerging, it was exciting. It was one of the obvious roots to success. The students were eager, and they worked hard. They still do. Our alumni said their careers took off because of RIT. They traveled internationally, managed big departments and projects, started their own companies. It just amazes me what all our students have done. What personal and academic accomplishments are you most proud of? Motorola was set to build a fab in Virginia. I thought, I would love a teaching experience at a place that had a fab right next door. We did get industry support at RIT, but not in the way of having it right there. Ironically, I went to Virginia after 14 years teaching at RIT and developed a microelectronic engineering program at Virginia Commonwealth University. It’s interesting that people thought they could do what RIT did, like it was no big deal, and they could not. The uniqueness of this program is immense. I returned to teaching at RIT in 2003 and became program director in 2008. Outside of the college, I’ve been a steering committee member of two large conferences—the University Industry Government Microelectronic Symposium since 1985 and the Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (founded by Lynn Fuller) since 1992. It was good advertising for our programs at RIT and what we are doing. It earned us the respect of other universities, and I’m very proud of that. I wrote the history of both of the conferences so that people would know how they began—again this is my interest in history. I should teach a history class! Academically, winning the IEEE Outstanding Teaching Award in 2023 was great and I’m proud that Ivan Puchades, a former student and now an RIT engineering faculty member, nominated me for that. I’ve also been involved in the funding and creation of three different RIT scholarship awards for our microelectronic engineering students, and I’d like to start some more. What will you be doing in retirement? Helping coach my grandkids’ soccer teams. I’ll be doing some gardening, woodworking, I like wood carving and getting back into kayaking. I haven’t done much but now will be able to get out more and do this. I’ll have more time to ride my bike—if my knee still works—those old soccer injuries. I live in Henrietta and will probably still be on campus, I can’t seem to stay away.
- Tech influencer energized by Imagine RITTech influencer Jacklyn Dallas knows a thing or two about creativity and innovation. But when she got the chance in late April to visit the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival, she said she was “blown away.” More than 34,000 people visited campus on April 26 for Imagine RIT. They got to experience a record-setting number of exhibits that highlighted student, faculty, and staff work at the cutting edge of technology, the arts, and design. “It was genuinely one of the most energizing days of the year so far for me,” Dallas said. “The students were brilliant, curious, and so many of them had personal missions driving what they were building.” Jacklyn Dallas with RIT President David Munson at Imagine RIT. Dallas launched her YouTube Channel NothingButTech when she was 13. She’s expanded her social media presence to Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and podcasts, with a total following in the hundreds of thousands. She’s racked up tens of millions of views for her interviews with luminaries such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and Rivian Automotive CEO RJ Scaringe, as well as in-depth behind-the-scenes tours and product reviews. Just 23 years old, she’s already given guest lectures at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and New York University. She visited Imagine RIT as part of a partnership with the university. She shared glimpses of her day with her followers during her visit and recently published a more in-depth look at her experience. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jacklyn/NothingButTech (@nbtjacklyn) “I have the privilege of spending a lot of time in tech labs and at launch events led by incredibly smart engineers and founders—and I felt that same energy at RIT,” Dallas said. Would she come back? “In a heartbeat,” she said. Learn more about Dallas and her work at her website NothingButTech.
- RIT student video game creations take top prizes at GameFest 2025When RIT students create video games, they don’t just mail it in. A team of students won the Grand Prize at GameFest 2025 for developing Pelican Post. The game is about a pelican mailman delivering mail to a small town of unique characters. Along the way, players help the town regain a lost sense of community. The narrative game, which is in the cozy genre that emphasizes low-stress and non-violence, is currently in development. GameFest, held at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in April, is an annual showcase of student talent in game development. The competition brings together college students from around New York state and the Northeast to exhibit their games. Thirty games were accepted at GameFest this year. Three of the four finalists for the Grand Prize were games from RIT. “The quality of the games this year across the board, not just from RIT, was seriously impressive,” said Benjamin Snyder, visiting lecturer in RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media (IGM). “What stood out to me the most was how intentional our teams were about the full experience, including updated websites, social media presence, and promotional materials. You could tell they had considered how people would encounter their games and how to keep that connection going. That big-picture mindset is going to serve them really well moving forward.” In addition to the Grand Prize, Pelican Post also won Excellence in Narrative Design and was a finalist for Excellence in Visual Art. Four other RIT student games were highlighted at the 2025 competition, including:Good Luck Valley — won Excellence in Visual Art and finalist for Excellence in Narrative and the Grand Prize Grim’s Coffin — won Excellence in Game Design and Grand Prize finalist Vessyl — finalist for Excellence in Game Design and Technical Excellence Echoes in the Mist — Technical Excellence finalist Snyder said that what makes the biggest difference for RIT students at competitions is that they tend to take opportunities and really run with them. “They don’t just treat their games as something they needed to make for a class—they treat them like they’re already in the industry,” said Snyder. “That mindset shift, from ‘this is a class project’ to ‘this is something I believe in,’ is what really raises the bar and changes the perception from ‘a game made by students’ to ‘a game made by developers who happen to be students.’” How Pelican Post delivered Pelican Post started as a game jam submission for the 2024 New Year, New Skills Game Jam. The game development event had the theme of “making connections.” Pelican Post In Pelican Post, players take on the role of Pepper, a young pelican who recently moved to Port Pleasant for a job as the town’s mailman. Through the job, players interact with and get to know the townsfolk and help them out. The creators said that small acts of kindness is pretty much in the mailman’s job description. In 2024, the team continued working on Pelican Post through RIT’s MAGIC Maker Program. The extracurricular program provides students with the funding, studio space, and mentoring support to manage their own digital media projects and prepare them for publication and investment readiness. “While the game was already visually impressive prior to the program, the majority of actual development happened during the Maker program,” said Jeremy Kotz, a third-year game design and development major from North Potomac, Md. “We worked incredibly hard to transform the game from a visual and conceptual demo into a full game demo with a complete vertical slice—a segment of the game that is polished, contains all core gameplay features, and is reflective of the final product we aim to create.” Kotz said that the team’s success at GameFest can be largely attributed to its efforts during RIT’s MAGIC Maker program. “Pelican Post stood out because we have a clear vision for the world we are creating and the experience we want players to have,” said Kotz. “Players were fully immersed in the cozy atmosphere of the game and we received an incredible amount of positive feedback.” The Pelican Post team includes Connor Petrei (top row, left to right), Rylan, Vanacore, Drew Genel, Jeremy Kotz, Ricard Halvorson, Cheryl Chang (bottom row, left to right), Joana Leong, and Jason Weinberg. The Pelican Post team currently includes development lead and game designer Kotz; visual lead Drew Genel ’25 (new media design); narrative lead Connor Petrei, a fourth-year game design and development major; composer Joana Leong, a fourth-year game design and development major; developer Ricard Halvorson, a third-year design and development major; developer Jason Weinberg ’25 (game design and development); developer Gale Ellis ’24 (game design and development); animator Cheryl Chang, a fourth-year film and animation major; and marketer Rylan Vanacore ’25 (journalism). In the fall, several members of the team are bringing the game to their IGM Production Studio course, where they will get to continue creating content for the game. In the future, they hope to work with MAGIC to publish the game on Steam.
