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. Among these students was Peter Hogya, a fourth-year computer science major from Bayville, N.Y., who has been instrumental in this “need-of-the-hour” innovation involving the distribution of these vaccinations. How did this idea come together? It all started when I attended a virtual hackathon for the Society for Imaging in Informatics and Medicine in Wisconsin in the summer of 2020. I joined forces with the Marquette University team to brainstorm a way to combat the results of this pandemic. MassVaxx was initially an idea that came from a professor at the Opus College of Engineering while in conversation with an incident management team who expressed a need for a tool to distribute COVID-19 vaccines. The professor worked on this idea and brought it to the hackathon. With the news of the release of the vaccine, our team, which consisted of students well versed in biomedical engineering and computer science, decided to aim at a way to get these vaccines out to the mass population, and this was when MassVaxx was born. Can you explain how MassVaxx works? MassVaxx is essentially an app designed to aid health-related departments when the COVID-19 vaccine becomes available to the general public by creating a smooth registration and vaccination process. Our team built an initial version of MassVaxx during a hackathon. Post hackathon, a few Marquette professors approached the students that were part of this team to take this forward collaboratively. Fast forward to Feb. 26 and we conducted our first functional test, which was a rousing success. We had about 30 volunteers that were nurses, software testers, students, and family of people on the Marquette side of our team, as the test was conducted in Wisconsin. We got a lot of feedback. One of the nurses said, “It took us 10 minutes to set up the app and we were up and flying.” How did you get connected with RIT’s Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship? As an RIT student, I got the opportunity to participate in the innovation programs at the Simone Center, where I decided to pitch the MassVaxx idea. I also ended up recruiting three other RIT students—Antony Lin and Nicholas Mulhern, computer science majors, and Thomas Ryszkiewicz, a recent graduate in web design—to work on the project. For the Innovation Fellows Program in the fall, we performed around 50 customer discovery interviews. For the Accelerator Program that is happening now, we’re doing around 200 customer discovery interviews. The coaches that we worked with at Simone Center, especially Mark Boylan, Anthony Testa, and Craig McGowan, helped us develop our marketing and business plans, and helped prepare us to pitch to potential investors. How does someone sign up to use MassVaxx? As of today, MassVaxx is a nonprofit organization with around 30 volunteers currently working with the Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalition, an emergency management organization in Wisconsin, to test their software. A patient using MassVaxx would be prompted to provide basic personal and health details and schedule an appointment at the site. This handles everything required to get the vaccination so that the patient would not have to do anything on the site except schedule the vaccination. Once the appointment is scheduled and all the required details are provided, a QR code is generated which can be used by the patient to swipe in. Workers administering this vaccine can just scan the code on-site to view patient information easily, which helps in making the process quick and efficient. This app is also used to help manage the sites, keep track of people who are vaccinated, inventory, and wastage. What are your goals for this project? I am currently the president and business development lead for MassVaxx. Over the last semester, we have been responsible for conducting customer interviews and talking to around 40 different emergency management service providers, nurses, and people in healthcare to try and bridge any gaps that we foresee. At the end of spring, we will be pitching to potential investors. The goal is simple: to vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, so we can all get on with our lives. If anyone would like to help or join us, email pmh6003@rit.edu.

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Creative Industry “Day” drew a wide range of talent seekers from companies such as Amazon, Forbes Media, and Microsoft last week, as the 16th annual event went virtual this year due to the pandemic. Sixty companies in all participated during the Feb. 22-26 event, which featured a weeklong array of virtual career talks and panels and 925 portfolio reviews for more than 350 students by 85 creative industry professionals—many of whom were RIT alumni, according to Gretchen Burruto, associate director and College of Art and Design team lead, Office of Career Services and Co-op. “We always hear positive comments and outstanding feedback from companies about the creative talent at RIT,” Burruto said. “While we went virtual this year, the overwhelming attendance for our career talks and panels showed that the overall participation was as active and enthusiastic as ever.” Held annually since 2006, the event draws College of Art and Design students and alumni in areas such as art, design, film, and photography along with select majors like game design and mobile computing from RIT’s Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences. According to Burruto, the event’s goal is “to offer career-related programming and the opportunity for RIT student talent to meet—virtually this year—with creative industry professionals, get valuable feedback on their portfolios, discuss job opportunities, and make valuable connections that may benefit their career.”

An endowment dedicated to a beloved Black History Month tradition at Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf 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. “I am thrilled to have the William G. McGowan Fund support the JB Black History Month Celebration Endowment,” said Mark Rosica, RIT/NTID associate professor and a McGowan Fund trustee. “When I first learned of the creation of the endowment in 2019 to support this wonderful annual event, we were honored to be one of the initial supporters. When I recently discovered they were close to completing the endowment, I knew we had to help.” Named after longtime RIT employee Johnnie “JB” Brown, who founded the event in 1995 and managed it annually, the endowment will help preserve the luncheon, which is held each February and features guest speakers who discuss matters relevant to Black History Month. The popular event prompts the return to campus of many retired RIT and NTID colleagues each year. “I have known JB for many decades, and he is known for his fine work and genuine care and interest in people’s lives,” Rosica said. “As you stop and chat, it is clear that JB embodies the spirit of my uncle’s fund, ‘to impact lives today, create sustainable change, and empower future generations to achieve their greatest potential.’ Our fund’s statement on Inclusion also says that we are ‘committed to advancing an equitable, inclusive, and just society through all of our work.’ My hope is that the Black History Month Celebration continues to do this in a style that will continue to make my good friend JB very proud of what he created.” At the 2019 fund launch, Brown said, “I’m humbled by all of this. I have such passion for the annual potluck luncheon, and I have to thank everyone who helps every year and who has helped it grow. I’m really glad that this event will live on. It brings so many people from the RIT/NTID family together, and it’s a great way to honor Black History Month.” Contributions to the fund are still being accepted.

RIT’s Electronic Gaming Society is always reinventing itself to provide its members with the best gaming experience possible. During the COVID-19 pandemic, that has been no different. In addition to offering students access to more popular consoles and hosting game servers, the club is experimenting with virtual reality that has made their weekly game nights, Wednesday evenings from 8 to 11 p.m., increasingly popular. Before COVID, RIT gamers could be found gathered together with their consoles, Xboxes, Playstations, or at open TV spaces. But with the onset of COVID and physical distancing requirements, Electronic Gaming Society members have partnered with Discord to officially host the club. Virtual game nights include titles like Jackbox, Among Us, Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, Halo, Overwatch, and Rocket League, to name a few. The group is also working on the popular Minecraft Project, where members gather weekly to use the game to build a digital version of the RIT campus. “I think we are very heavily invested in the Zoom culture now where the only thing we’re doing is using technology to learn and function in life which was not what it was before,” said Alexa Amoriello, a third-year game design and development major from Westchester, N.Y., and Electronic Gaming Society president. “I think it's really important for students to take a break and explore different mediums of technology, and de-stress for a little bit.” Amoriello believes electronic gaming plays a huge role in community building, especially at a time like this. “A lot more games are being developed to bring people together, which truly is the need of the hour,” said Amoriello. “Newbies” often start by joining a gaming community to learn more about what they might be interested in, what they can try themselves, and meet people with similar interests. Hardcore gamers or even beginners who want to learn can participate in the club. In addition to the weekly game nights, The Electronic Gaming Society, which is sponsored by RIT Student Government, hosts tournaments and LAN parties. It also sponsors several communities for gamers such as the Pokemon Club, among others, and has established partnerships with game companies like Ubisoft. The club has also hosted launch parties for games such as Assassins Creed. The club was also recognized by Microsoft and was featured in their COVID Gaming Session Podcast that was joined by more than 5,000 attendees. Amoriello and the other club members plan to continue to engage gamers in fun and interactive ways and look forward to when they all gather together again. “With COVID slowly going away, we hope to create a safe space again for students to come back once the precautions have been approved by RIT,” added Amoriello. “Gaming is for everyone and we hope that the Electronic Gaming Society is a good outlet to help a beginner get started or an experienced gamer connect with a community they hadn’t before.” To learn more about the club’s weekly virtual game night, go to its Discord page.

IBM is making a more than $3.3 million in-kind donation to Rochester Institute of Technology to help enhance cybersecurity capabilities in the university’s new Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI), as well as support security training and competitions for students. With the donation, RIT will be able to enhance cybersecurity workforce development in the GCI’s Cyber Range and Training Center. Equipped with IBM cybersecurity tools and expertise, the new Cyber Range at RIT can offer immersive cyberattack training scenarios to help prepare professionals on how to respond more effectively to real world cyberattacks. The collaboration has allowed RIT to become the first university to license the IBM Security Command Cyber Range design, one of the first spaces to offer immersive cybersecurity simulations. RIT experts were inspired after visiting the IBM Cyber Range in Cambridge, Mass., and sought to recreate that experience at RIT.  “IBM is an industry leader in cybersecurity and so we definitely appreciate the support that IBM has shown and are incredibly excited to collaborate with industry experts to lead effective change in cybersecurity,” said Steve Hoover, the Katherine Johnson Executive Director of GCI. “Our mission at the GCI is to make our digital world and digital selves safer, and this donation really speaks to IBM’s shared commitment to that vision.” IBM is contributing state-of-the-art software, IBM consulting services, and access to curriculum and licenses to the GCI. IBM is also continuing its commitment to the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC), the top ethical hacking competition for college students, which is run by RIT. IBM will be the CPTC’s exclusive premier sponsor for the next five years. “The work RIT is doing to equip future generations of cybersecurity talent is a critical facet of meeting growing demand in our field,” said Heather Ricciuto, Academic and Talent Program Manager, IBM Security. “This contribution and the ongoing collaboration between IBM and RIT can prepare learners with resources to gain experience, while also helping IBM connect with future skilled professionals.” The GCI Cyber Range is being equipped with IBM Security QRadar technology, which helps security teams accurately detect and prioritize threats across the enterprise, enabling swift investigation and response to help reduce the impact of incidents. By consolidating data from thousands of devices, endpoints, and applications distributed throughout the network, QRadar Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) correlates information and aggregates related events into single alerts, helping accelerate security incident analysis and remediation. “I’m excited because of how IBM QRadar technology connects with Watson artificial intelligence, allowing us to do much deeper analysis of cyberattacks,” said Justin Pelletier, director of the Cyber Range and Training Center. “Plus, we’ll get to use IBM/i2 Analyst’s Notebook tool, which lets us graphically map cybersecurity data and perform network calculations that can uncover hidden connections. Their donation to help train the next generation of cybersecurity professionals can have a long-term benefit to society as a whole.” GCI organizers are creating different scenarios for organizations to come in and face-off against advanced persistent threats seeking to steal valuable information and wreak havoc. For example, participants might have to defend the network of a medical center during a natural disaster or discover a malware attack that could impact millions of retail customers. “These experiences will be varied and customized, so participants will never know exactly what to expect — just like real life,” said Pelletier. The immersive incident response experiences are currently under construction and organizers hope to start offering training in the fall. “The Cyber Range is going to allow us to create scenarios where non-technical professionals can come in and learn about the weaknesses in their systems and how to rectify those problems,” said Chad Weeden, director of esports and cybersecurity range at RIT. “We’re even integrating RIT’s strength in interactive games and media to create immersive stories where participants have to work together to solve the problems.” The Cyber Range can offer a highly realistic simulation of a state of the art SOC (Security Operations Center) licensed from IBM, which provides the ability to simulate complex global networks of up to 5,000 endpoints with realistic applications software and usage. Those capabilities can be accessed remotely and can provide highly interactive physically realistic experiences for more than 30 participants present in the physical part of the Cyber Range. It features a video wall with 1080p and 4K screens, a control room, a conference room, and electrostatic privacy glass walls. LED lights that surround the room can bring the mood of a training scenario from a welcoming blue to a stress-inducing flashing red. Rumbling speakers can be used to mimic disaster scenarios, while temperature controls can literally turn up the heat of the situation. The Cyber Range infrastructure is already being used for RIT's Cybersecurity Bootcamp —a 15-week immersive training course that is helping people switch careers and join the cybersecurity workforce. The bootcamp prepares people from all backgrounds (even those with no prior coding or IT experience) for critical entry-level cybersecurity roles. The bootcamp is being delivered remotely, with new cohorts starting every few months. The Cyber Range infrastructure was also used during the most recent Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC) international finals in January. Student teams from 15 of the best cybersecurity colleges faced-off to see who was best at finding the vulnerable spots in complex computer networks and systems, along with presenting plans to better secure them. RIT’s student team took first place at the competition. “We’ve been lucky enough to partner with RIT for the past six years to help up and coming professionals build their cyber skills through the CPTC event,” said Bob Kalka, Global Vice President for Technical Sales, IBM Security. “Our investment will help us to continue that partnership, while also providing quality technology and resources that will be instrumental in further developing the cybersecurity talent that is urgently needed across all industries.” The IBM donation is part of the university’s largest fundraising effort in history, Transforming RIT: The Campaign for Greatness. With IBM’s support, the $1 billion campaign recently surpassed the $750 million mark.

The Innovative Maker and Learning Complex will be a building like no other on the RIT campus, and an alumnus who is helping make it possible wants RIT students to give it a name to remember. Name the IMLC contest, which started on March 1, is for current RIT undergraduate and graduate students in good standing. Deadline for submission is March 13. Voting will begin March 18. The submission process and other details are available at the Name the IMLC website. RIT trustee and donor Austin McChord ’09 said he is hoping students submit playful, whimsical names for the building that show personality and give them a sense of ownership of the place. “This is a unique building and a unique space for RIT, and to name it something uniquely relevant to the students and the people who are attending RIT in the here and now seems to make a lot more sense than to name it after myself,” McChord said. McChord said he would pick a name that’s off the beaten path. “You think about all the college tours that will begin or end there, and that’s way more interesting if it has a story. This can have a real story as to how the students came to this name and I’m excited to see their creativity.” RIT Student Government will select the top seven finalists and the student body will choose the top three choices. A leadership panel, which includes McChord; RIT President David Munson; and James Yarrington, RIT university architect and director of Planning and Design Service, will make the final choice. The RIT Board of Trustees will consider the naming resolution for official adoption, which is standard protocol at RIT. The winner or winning team will receive $500 in Tiger Bucks. McChord’s generosity extends to the contest, noted Phil Castleberry, vice president for University Advancement. “The Name the IMLC student contest is an exciting opportunity to showcase that same spirit in our students,” Castleberry said. “Austin has strongly encouraged ‘whimsical and unique’ entries that capture RIT’s spirit of innovation and distinctive focus on technology, art, and design. We know our students are incredibly creative, so we’re excited to see what they come up with.” The 100,000-square-foot facility currently under construction between Wallace Library and Monroe Hall will draw students from all colleges to its collaborative maker spaces, dance studios, practice rooms, theaters, and learning spaces. The building design and expanse of glass will showcase RIT students’ penchant for making, building, and blending technology, art, and design. It will embody the spirit of the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival. “I hope the building is an opportunity for students to come together and work on interdisciplinary projects,” McChord said. “Maker space is really important to me. That mixing of art students and engineering students is something that is a uniquely RIT thing, and to create a space that is effectively dedicated to that is really exciting.” McChord, in 2017, gave RIT $50 million, the largest gift ever made to the university. He made the gift a decade after he founded Datto, a global provider of data protection. McChord is currently the CEO of Casana, the maker of a cardiac health-monitoring smart toilet seat. The gift was designated to foster creativity and entrepreneurship through the IMLC and Entrepreneurial Gap Year fellowships, and to advance RIT’s cybersecurity and artificial intelligence capabilities. McChord’s contributions are an important part of Transforming RIT: The Campaign for Greatness, a $1 billion university fundraising effort. This blended campaign seeks support from a variety of investors, including alumni and friends, government and corporate partners, and research foundations and agencies. The campaign has raised $755 million to date. “I think I certainly wouldn’t have been successful without the education I got at RIT. And the ideas behind Datto, which is the company I built, I had while at RIT and this was an opportunity to give back,” McChord said. “I think about the gift as a way to show my gratitude to RIT and help RIT hopefully to produce other people who go on to do big, exciting things.”

Rochester Institute of Technology and its National Technical Institute for the Deaf have announced a partnership with Garth Fagan Dance for a “cooperative-creative-connection” to begin Aug. 1. Garth Fagan Dance, in its 50th year, is an internationally acclaimed contemporary American dance company based in downtown Rochester. Its founder, Garth Fagan, 80, may be best known for his Tony and Olivier award-winning choreography for Disney’s The Lion King. Photo Gallery A photo gallery from the Garth Fagan Dance "NY PopsUp" performances on Feb. 21 is available. “We’re extremely excited about the Garth Fagan Dance-RIT/NTID Cooperative-Creative-Connection, an innovative, interactive academic and artistic partnership to enhance and expand the educational experience through the intersections of technology, science, design, and performing arts,” said Thomas Warfield, RIT’s director of dance. “Through the abstraction of movement, modern dance translates how we see the world and our place in it, what we think and how we feel.” “The opportunity to traverse the nexus of technology and the arts will help demonstrate how the creativity that has produced 50 years of world class dance can affect dance and technology for years to come,” said William J. Ferguson II, acting executive director for Garth Fagan Dance. Some online or in-person courses may be taught by members of Garth Fagan Dance, and resources such as rehearsal space, mentoring, and expertise may be shared. The partnership will allow collaboration for mutual projects which may include:Social justice outreach: Exploring the use of dance and the performing arts as tools in examining issues surrounding social justice. Community outreach: Increasing the access to dance and the performing arts for students in the Rochester City School District. Gaming/film animation: Exploring opportunities to integrate dance and technology, such as 3D animation, virtual reality, video game design, etc. Innovative dance curriculum: To be jointly developed and implemented at NTID. Music programming collaboration: Involving Garth Fagan Dance and RIT’s College of Liberal Arts with a focus on African drumming, jazz ensemble, steel drum band, etc. Multi-disciplinary design: Exploring opportunities to integrate Garth Fagan Dance into other areas of RIT curricula, especially those that combine technology, the arts, and design. Student co-op opportunities: Employing RIT students in the area of arts business and arts management at Garth Fagan Dance. Warfield said NTID is specifically identified in the partnership because NTID is where RIT’s dance program and lab is based. This is the latest formal partnership RIT has established recently with area organizations. Other partnerships have been made with the Seneca Park Zoo Society and Genesee Country Village & Museum. Garth Fagan Dance has worked on various projects with RIT since the 1970s including RIT’s School of Film and Animation. RIT Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Granberg signed the memorandum of understanding just prior to three shows Garth Fagan Dance gave Sunday at RIT in a state-sponsored NY Pops-Up event to promote artists, many who have been struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Warfield said more than 500 RIT students are currently involved in dance classes and clubs, and that number is likely to grow with the partnership and RIT’s performing arts scholarships. Having professional dancers involved in teaching students will also make it easier to develop a dance minor at RIT once curricular enhancements and reviews are studied. He said an informal survey of RIT students involved in dance revealed 70 percent wanted to have dance connected in some way to their majors. “The students are already thinking about this and they want dance to have some purpose for them beyond the dance studio,” Warfield said. “This is why we need to codify these experiences. I believe this will reinvigorate the students who have been wanting to blend dancing with other disciplines.” Warfield and RIT/NTID have already had success merging modern dance to science. AstroDance was an original production of Warfield’s funded by the National Science Foundation combining dance, astrophysics, multi-media, sound and computer simulations. It toured the country, telling the story of the search for gravitational waves. “After our performances when we paired science and dance together, we got a lot of questions from the audiences,” Warfield said. “The people there who loved dance were interested to know more about science, and the people who came because they loved science wanted to know more about dance.” Warfield hopes to develop more interdisciplinary projects involving dance, science, and technology, and have courses developed for students as a result of those innovative projects. “That would put us in a unique place for dance,” he said.

World Around You, a multilingual platform created by a team at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, 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.   “World Around You is a library of storybooks about different topics, including COVID-19, folktales, deaf experiences, cultural items and foods, and sign language genres,” said Christopher Kurz, a professor in NTID’s master’s in secondary education program and the project lead. “WAY promotes community inclusion and engagement by allowing deaf and hearing contributors to create, publish, and distribute multilingual signed stories with written text collaboratively across the Internet. WAY reinforces global literacy for deaf children and global sign language documentation of local, regional, and national sign languages by deaf people.” Along with development partner Second Avenue Learning, and RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media and MAGIC Center, Kurz and his team worked to create interactive stories in six signed languages—Filipino, Indonesian, Somali, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Samoan. “WAY was created as a free and open source software platform for publication and distribution of Creative Commons licensed content,” said Stephen Jacobs, director of Open@RIT and a co-principal investigator on the project. “This allows anyone around the world to use it, work with us to improve it, or create their own version of the books available in WAY, or even the entire software system, for their own uses.” Tory VanVoorhis, CEO of Second Avenue Learning, was delighted with the collaboration. “Second Avenue and NTID have collaborated on this project to produce a result where the whole of the collaboration is greater than the sum of the parts. This reflects what a more inclusive, accessible society represents: people being stronger when banding together than when alone, or worse, excluded. We continue to look for opportunities where we can do the same thing,” said VanVoorhis. Members of the mEducation Alliance, a representative body of bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector partners, and academic researchers, reviewed nominated programs. This year's categories included Literacy; Youth and Workforce Development; Crisis and Conflict; Numeracy and S.T.E.M.; Inclusive Education; EdTech Researcher Extraordinaire; and Policymaker EdTech Champion. “The mEducation Alliance Annual Award Show is a new tradition established this year that is meant to celebrate extraordinary edtech champions making learning possible and education accessible to all,” said Tony Bloome, executive director and founder. “We are pleased to honor the creators of World Around You for their commitment to inclusion and accessibility.” The full list of categories and winners is on the mEducation Alliance website.

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. ‌ A. Sue Weisler Ekua Quagraine, first-year international business student from Kansas City, Mo., mixes up a batch of dough. Students within RIT’s three hospitality clubs, Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals, American Hotel & Lodging Association, and the Eta Sigma Delta honor society, baked and delivered cookies to first responders at Rochester’s Strong Memorial Hospital and Unity Hospital this week. “We had a meeting with our advisors and realized we had an amazing opportunity to use our resources and time to give back to first responders,” said Ndidi Chimah, a second-year hospitality and tourism management and international business student from Baltimore, and president of RIT’s Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals student chapter. “We also thought baking and packaging cookies would be a great way to bring our members together safely, which we haven’t been able to do much of this year.” ‌ A. Sue Weisler Trinity McFadden, third-year criminal justice student from Norwalk, Conn., gets a batch of cookies ready for baking. To accomplish this, students volunteered their time off during one of three Recharge Days offered by RIT this semester. On Tuesday, Feb. 23, they gathered in Henry’s Kitchen to bake. “Even with busy schedules, the students decided to make good use of the Recharge Day to gather, in compliance with pandemic protocols, to complete this mission,” said Jerrie Hsieh, faculty advisor and associate professor in the Department of International Hospitality and Service Innovation. “Thirteen students volunteered to help. They began at 9 a.m. and finished at 3 p.m. They were exhausted, but I could see the pride on their faces after they made 1,000 cookies for their heroes. I know they all feel great knowing their handmade cookies may cheer up the hospital workers.” The students hope this initiative will encourage others to give back to their communities, not only during pandemic times, but every day, said Chimah. ‌ A. Sue Weisler Ndidi Chimah, second-year hospitality major from Baltimore, Md., hopes the initiative will encourage others to give back to their communities. “We realized it took a pandemic for us to really appreciate our first responders like we should. Our hope is that as a community we all take it upon ourselves to continue giving back and giving appreciation where it’s due. First responders, teachers, professors, grocery store clerks, and so many others are keeping the world running. They really do deserve all our appreciation.” The International Hospitality and Service Innovation department at RIT’s Saunders College of Business offers programs at the intersection of technology, people, and service, preparing students for opportunities in fields like hotel management, travel and tourism, food and beverage, and event planning.