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Diverse, Active, Committed Faculty

Up your game
with our down-
to-earth experts.

Enthusiasm and commitment to teaching are undeniable characteristics of RIT’s faculty. From graphic artists and engineers to scientists and management specialists, they will spark your curiosity, challenge you to grow, and inspire you to achieve your dreams.

At RIT, the student to faculty ratio is 14 to one. The average class size is 25 students.

Teaching comes first

This is a place where faculty enjoy interacting with students—not only in class or during office hours but in the dining halls, in the coffee shop at the library, or at the Student Life Center. It’s a friendly but challenging environment, and our faculty’s approach to teaching makes it so.

Our faculty have extensive experience in the classroom and their professional fields. Their real-life experiences and their involvement in applied research and consulting means that their teaching is well informed and up to date. They’ll talk with you about career choics and graduate school. Our professors think about your future almost as much as you do, and they are committed to your success.

Beyond the classroom

While their primary emphasis is on teaching, faculty members also are active in business, industry, publishing, and research, bringing RIT worldwide recognition and inspiring exciting learning opportunities. Here are a few examples of our outstanding faculty, including some who have won the prestigious Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching:

Willie Osterman

Willie Osterman, professor of photography in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, used his Fulbright award to assist the University of Zagreb in developing curricula for the first degree in photography created at a Croatian university. “The experience was an excellent  supplement to my teaching at RIT,” says Osterman.

Margaret Bailey

Margaret Bailey is a professor in mechanical engineering. Bailey conducts research in several areas related to energy conservation and energy conversion and strives to involve both undergraduate and graduate students in her research activity to enrich their educational experiences. In addition, she helped create the Women in Engineering (WE@RIT) Program, an outreach effort that provides support to female engineering students while reaching out to girls in middle and high school.

Manuela Campanelli

The field of gravitational wave astrophysics is right around the corner and Manuela Campanelli, professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences, is partially responsible. Her team simulated the merger of two supermassive black holes on a supercomputer and cracked open a window to the world Albert Einstein envisioned with his Theory of General Relativity. A leader in her field, Campanelli explores the most violent processes in the universe—the collision of masses powerful enough to produce gravity waves and a new way of looking into space and time.

Keith Jenkins

Keith Jenkins, 2010 Eisenhart Award winner and associate professor of communication in the College of Liberal Arts, says, “I want students to believe that they can follow their passions and be successful, while also instilling the idea that thoughtful and committed people can change the world.”

Jenkins has focused on engaging students in the classroom, through experiential learning opportunities and through his research work, which includes a study of the impact of race on rhetoric and an analysis of the public speeches of President Barack Obama.

At RIT, faculty like these are accessible, teaching undergraduate classes and engaging students in their projects and research.