NY Wine and Culinary Center? Don't mind if I do...

At one of the Staff Council Executive Committee meetings, we toyed around with the idea of moving the  Staff Council annual retreat off campus somewhere. The suggestion came up that we try for the NY Wine and Culinary Center, since there are connections between them and RIT. It sounded cost prohibitive, but what do you know - someone worked some magic and made it happen!

So today was the big day of the Staff Council retreat. Although I've been involved in RSC now for a couple months, this felt like a true initiation and orientation. The retreat started with a DELICIOUS lunch prepared by NYW&CC, which I shamelessly went back for seconds (and thirds on the cookies) for. This was a nice and informal way to get to know each other more. And, what do you know - I learned that a fellow RSC'er also used to work for Pictometry! She was there before my time, which made it even more interesting. Small world.

After lunch, we each stood up and introduced ourselves to everyone, and said one thing that has happened in our jobs to make us proud of our roles at RIT. I related my experience at Greece Apollo's NTO Day, when I felt so welcomed and honored. After this, the general roles & responsibilities as RSC members were described, after which we broke out into our respective blocks to divide up the constituents lists. This was a lot of fun, because it gave me a chance to get to know my fellow block 6'ers better. I took all of CIS and the Center for Detectors, IHST, and a few folks in Engineering. My next steps are to go out and introduce myself to all of these people.

After this, there was a brainstorming session to come up with a list of topics, tasks, and issues for RSC to address in the coming year. We then broke out into our committees - I am on the new ad hoc outreach committee. This was yet another chance to meet some new folks, including a captionist who is actually enrolled in Imaging Science courses for the fall! We established how often we will be meeting and when, who the chair of the committee is, and what we would like to accomplish.

At this point, we were way behind schedule, so we quickly packed it up and called it a day. And what a wonderful day it was! I was so glad to get off campus. It really allowed us to expand our imaginations and was a pleasant opportunity to congregate in a different atmosphere. NYW&CC is breathtaking - What a treat! And I had a pleasant scenic drive back along Routes 5 & 20 (I love that drive).

Not the Philharmonic Orchestra

Today was the first field trip for the interns, and I was invited to tag along! We rode in style in a limo party bus up the street to Rochester Precision Optics (RPO). RPO was once the optics division of Kodak until it split off a few years ago. The company is hugely successful, has been been ranking very high (top 10) on the Rochester Top 100, and is currently in the midst of a huge expansion. We got to tour the manufacturing facilities, where we saw lenses of various materials being ground, polished, coated, and tested. We also had to put on smocks to enter a clean room to watch precision glass molding, where glass is heated and molded as opposed to ground and polished. RPO is one of only 3 companies in the US capable of this process. It was really cool! RPO has a really nice facility and appears to have a lot of employee perks. It would be a great place to work and they are actively searching for young imaging scientists!

After the tour we went over to Pizza Hut for their lunch buffet - what a treat! Though I later regretted over-stuffing myself... but now that I'm over the stomach ache, I don't regret it anymore.

Chillin' & Grillin'!

So about a month or so ago when the weather started getting really nice, I came up with an idea that we should have an outdoor grill time when everyone can get together and just be social. And not with any obligations - no presentations, no movies, no shop talk, just getting together for fun. I thought it would be great to start this out with the interns as a test group, and what do you know - my idea actually caught on!

We mentioned the idea at the daily intern morning meeting last Friday to see whether the interns would be interested, and they definitely were. We outlined it as being a BYOM (Bring Your Own Meat) cookout, but we would provide soda. Also we encouraged them to bring chairs, blankets, and lawn games (I offered to bring bocce and ladder ball). We also took care of arranging for a grill with Facilities, and Bob provided charcoal and lighter fluid. We decided our first try would be Thursday (today), since we plan to have it on Fridays but there was a scheduled field trip for this Friday.

I started to get pretty excited as I saw the interns posting on their blogs about how much they were looking forward to grilling! I was especially impressed yesterday when Bob told me that they actually took it upon themselves (entirely on their own!) to plan out who would bring what and fill out a sign up sheet. This morning you could definitely feel the excitement in the air!

Well the grill time went GREAT! The weather today was absolutely perfect - clear blue skies, bright sun, low humidity, temps in the 80's. There were games of bocce, ladder ball, and frisbee simultaneously going on, and everyone looked like they were having a blast. The Blue Angels just got into town and were doing practice fly-overs right over campus, so they really added to the fun (I have no idea how we'll top that next week). After getting through a few games, and after Bob came to the rescue by getting more buns, the interns took the responsibility of grilling their own food. There was quite a spread - burgers, hot dogs, chips, fruit, and brownies! They all sat together in a circle and ate and chatted, and once they were done took it upon themselves to clean up everything they brought outside.

Matt H., Evelyn, Emily, and Sarah play "Xtreme" bocce

Alex appears to really be in the ladderball zone...

And the cookout begins! Sarah learned that vertically-dropped burgers tend to fall through the grill...

The irony was not lost on us that at this internship, commonly described as "better than flipping burgers", the interns are, in fact, flipping burgers.

The ladies got to sit around while the boys grilled :-)

On that note, I would like to exclaim how impressed I am by our group of interns this year!!! They are really on top of things and organized, without our help or suggestions. They organized getting each others' phone numbers and blog addresses; established their own daily lunches; and really ran with the idea for today's BBQ. They are also all very close and friendly with each other. I am so proud of our group already, and they've only been here for 1 week! I am excited for what's to come.

As for the weekly cookouts - I think they will definitely be continuing!

This was my first time going up to the 7th floor of Eastman

If you keep up with any of the news coming out of RIT as a whole, you're probably aware that RIT's 9th college will be starting up this fall: the Institute of Health Sciences and Technology (IHST). The IHST will be an academic unit that will include a College of Health Sciences and Technology, a Health Sciences Research Center, and a Health Sciences Outreach Center, and is a product of the RIT-RGHS (Rochester General Health System) partnership. RIT is currently undergoing a search to appoint a VP/Dean for IHST, and the Staff Council Executive Committee has been invited to meet with the candidates in joint meetings with members of RIT's Academic Senate.

So far, 3 of the 4 identified candidates have visited campus, and I participated in meetings with each of them. RSC-EC is not exactly involved in the whole process, as we don't really get any say in the final decision of who is hired; but we do get the unique and powerful opportunity to meet with the candidates, ask questions, and express concerns from a staff point of view. We then fill out a campus-wide Clipboard survey with our thoughts and reactions. It has been very interesting for me to be involved in the meetings, particularly because I am not directly involved with IHST or the new position (and admittedly have not participated in many candidate interviews period in my young professional life). Despite my limited familiarity with IHST and the new position, I have learned a lot from meeting with the different candidates. All of them are very well qualified, and as such I am confident that RIT's newest college will be a groundbreaking success.

If you would like to hear more details about my meetings with the candidates, leave a comment and I will respond!

Meet the 2011 Interns!

Today I put together a page that has pictures of all the interns and links to the blogs that they will be updating throughout the summer. Check it out! http://www.cis.rit.edu/2011interns

Interns are here!!!

It's the first Wednesday after 4th of July; you know what that means... INTERNS! Our 14 interns showed up today, ready to take on what is for most of them their first full time jobs. We have got a really fantastic group this year and I am so excited!

So as is the new tradition on their first day, the interns were split into groups and let loose on campus to compete in an imaging science scavenger hunt. The groups were all very fun and interactive, and I must say I was very impressed by the quality of their videos this year! One of the teams even split up to process the clips they had gotten so far while collecting more on a cell phone camera simultaneously - what strategy and forethought! Unfortunately I had to leave the showings early to participate in the College of Science Product Knowledge meeting with Admissions, Financial Aid, and University Studies staff. (Which, by the way, seems to have produced some interest - University Studies requested more information on Imaging Science, and we now have 3 of their students enrolled in the Freshmen Project for fall!) Luckily I was able to watch the rest of the videos on my own after I got back, which was not as much fun since I was by myself, but impressive nonetheless.

I can't wait to see what's to come with this group of interns this year, and am excited to be taking a larger role in the same program that brought me to Imaging Science in the first place 10 years ago. :-)

I take my work with me - which is not necessarily a bad thing

Although you could say my job follows a "typical 9 to 5"-ish schedule, I am actually working around the clock in the sense that I am always looking for more opportunities to promote Imaging Science and act as an ambassador for RIT. One of my extracurricular activities is membership in the Eastman Young Professionals (EYP) group out of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. If you're interested, you can find more information on EYP here. 

I recently wrote and uploaded a blog post for the Young Professionals blog section of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle website. I undoubtedly found a couple ways to sneak RIT and Imaging Science in there ;-). Check out my blog post: Top 10 Things to Do at the George Eastman House (& Nearby!) in July - and better yet, go DO some of the things I mentioned!