Rochester Institute of Technology
The Arts at RIT
The academic home of the arts at RIT is the College of Art and Design, though the Provost’s office has recently kicked off an initiative on Technology, the Arts, and Design that looks to more closely integrate these three major aspects of RIT’s mission. Existing centers and labs at RIT that are grounded in the arts include: The RIT MAGIC Center, a university-wide research center with a multi-disciplinary entrepreneurial approach to digital media research and production that blurs the lines between art and technology; Frameless Labs, which serves to bring attention to research, innovation and artistic creation in the fields of virtual and augmented reality; the Image Permanence Institute, which supports the preservation of cultural heritage collections, and The Center for Engaged Storycraft, an interdisciplinary center working and playing with story-based creativity, research, and technical craft. In the rapidly growing field of arts in health, the Studio 930 RIT Design Consultancy is a multidisciplinary studio focused on the production of access and health technologies products, and Personalized Healthcare Technology (PHT180) is creating the future of healthcare through groundbreaking technologies & radical collaborations. RIT is striving to develop the leading performing arts program in the nation for non-majors, with offerings in music, theatre, and dance and with two major facilities in development.
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Dr. David C. Munson Jr. became Rochester Institute of Technology’s 10th president in 2017.
As RIT’s president, Dr. Munson is responsible for one of the nation’s leading creative and innovative universities that leverages the power of technology, the arts, and design for the greater good.
Dr. Munson has more than 40 years of experience in higher education, which includes serving as the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering at the University of Michigan from 2006 to 2016. He earned his BS degree in electrical engineering (with distinction) from the University of Delaware in 1975. He earned an MS and MA in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1977, followed by a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1979, also from Princeton.
From 1979 to 2003, Dr. Munson was with the University of Illinois, where he was the Robert C. MacClinchie Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and a faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
In 2003, he became chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan prior to becoming dean.
Dr. Munson’s teaching and research interests are in the area of signal and image processing. His current research is focused on radar imaging and computer tomography. He is co-founder of InstaRecon Inc., a start-up firm to commercialize fast algorithms for image formation in computer tomography. He is affiliated with the Infinity Project, where he is coauthor of a textbook on the digital world, which has been used in hundreds of high schools nationwide to introduce students to engineering.
Dr. Munson serves on several boards, including: The Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) Leadership Roundtable, Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council, Greater Rochester Enterprise, Permanent.org, Rochester Area Colleges, Rochester Chamber of Commerce, Rochester Regional Health, RIT Croatia, and the Sustainable Manufacturing Innovation Alliance.
Prabu David, Ph.D. serves as provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at Rochester Institute of Technology. Dr. David comes to RIT from Michigan State University, where he has served as vice provost for faculty and academic staff development, interim vice provost for Teaching and Learning Innovation, and dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. He began his tenure at RIT on Aug. 1, 2023.
As the university’s chief academic officer, David overseas nine colleges, two degree-granting units, and international campuses in Croatia, Dubai, Kosovo, and China.
Key initiatives under David’s leadership include: increasing RIT’s bold new initiatives in research and graduate education on topics such as artificial intelligence, personalized health technology, and sustainability.
Before coming to RIT, David served as dean of Michigan State’s nationally ranked College of Communication Arts and Sciences, and the award-winning WKAR radio and TV station for nearly nine years. In that role, he oversaw a college with 3,700 students, 160 faculty members, 90 staff, and five academic departments. During his term, the college made significant strides in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and launched six new undergraduate majors, two new online master’s programs, and a new doctoral curriculum.
David was on the faculty at Ohio State University from 1993 to 2010, where he was assistant and associate professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies of the School of Communication, and Faculty Associate with OSU’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Center for Public Health Preparedness.
David graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Loyola College, Chennai, India, earned a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University, and completed his doctoral degree in mass communication from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Dr. Todd S. Jokl became Dean of RIT’s College of Art and Design in 2019. He previously served as Dean of the University of New Haven’s Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Connecticut, where he served as a professor and administrator for nearly two decades. Prior to his appointment at Lyme, he was a faculty member as well as chair of the Department of Art and Design and an assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of New Haven.
Jokl holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a master of fine arts from the University of Connecticut, and a doctorate in education from Southern Connecticut State University. He also completed the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
Susan Lakin is currently a Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the College of Art and Design. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and worked as a freelance photographer in Los Angeles, Sweden and Australia. In addition to her commercial photography work, she owned and operated a professional retail photographic supply store in Burbank, CA.
Attracted to RIT’s strong photography and computer science departments, Susan accepted her teaching position shortly after completing an MFA in Art Studio with an emphasis in digital arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She works across disciplines in her academic and art practices, which led to her role as a Fellow in the School of Individualized Study, an RIT academic unit that provides flexible individualized education pathways. Additionally, she serves on the RIT Center for Engaged Storycraft Steering Committee in the College of Liberal Arts, an interdisciplinary center working and playing with story-based creativity, research, and technical craft.
Susan’s artwork has received numerous awards and is part of the permanent collection at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and Photography Museum of Lishui, China. She has produced multiple interactive transmedia projects exploring the intersections of music, art, and technology. More recently, she is engaged with immersive technology and collaborates on community projects in the nonprofit sector. She is a founding member and co-chair of the RIT Frameless Labs, a collective to advance research, innovation and artistic creation in fields of virtual and augmented reality. She is chair of the 2020 annual Frameless Labs XR Symposium, an event and online journal for the community of VR/AR makers to encourage collaboration, growth of existing ventures and inspiration for new projects and technology.
David Schnuckel is an artist whose work thinks through glass, a writer who examines issues related to glass, and an educator who challenges students to find provocative solutions to conceptual problems by way of glass.
He holds a BA in Fine Arts from Anderson University and an MFA in Glass from the Rochester Institute of Technology. His work exhibits internationally and belongs in the permanent collections of the GlazenHuis in Lommel, Belgium, Glasmuseet Ebeltoft of Ebeltoft, Denmark, and the Museum of American Glass in Millville, New Jersey. Schnuckel has taught at Alfred University, the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, the Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass. As a writer, he maintains a blog that examines elements of his making and teaching practice entitled David Schnuckel Uses His Words and is a regular contributor to GASnews, the newsletter of the Glass Art Society.
Schnuckel is Assistant Professor of Glass in the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.
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RIT to Host 2024 a2ru Conference, “Generate | Integrate: Technology, the Arts & Design”
