RIT has two seasons: Winter and Recruitment.

It's touring season here in college world! There is a well established cycle when it comes to prospective student visits, with peaks in the fall and spring. Generally the fall is for high school seniors figuring out which schools they want to apply to, and the spring is a mixture of accepted students deciding where they ultimately want to go and high school juniors getting a jump start on the fall. This week began the shift from the former to the latter (which makes since since RIT deposits are due May 1!).

On Wednesday I showed around an accepted student who was getting a feel for Imaging Science at RIT and trying to decide between us and the optics program at a university down the road which shall remain nameless. I and a colleague showed her all around the building, introducing her to labs and students and any unlucky souls who happened to cross our paths. Knowing that she's also an active athlete, we made sure to connect her with students who have had to balance academic and athletic schedules. The tour was great, albeit a little overwhelming since we have so much going on here. One of the awesome parts of her visit was that after she left to get lunch, she and one of the students we introduced her to actually ran into each other getting noms so they chatted even more! (Man, we have the BEST students in this program. Though I shouldn't be surprised - the friendly atmosphere was one of the reasons I myself chose Imaging Science.) Overall, the prospective student's background and interests are very well suited for our program, and I could see her fitting in well here; so I'm hoping she will ultimately choose us! We will find out soon enough, I suppose, since deposits are due in a matter of days.

My hectic schedule of touring continued today with the daughter of one of CIS's research staff. Now, she falls under the category of high school juniors getting a leg up on next (academic) year. This tour was a little different than usual, because she actually wants to go to a community college at first to get a lot of requirements out of the way before (hopefully) transferring into RIT. She has a range of interests from IT/cyber security to computer engineering to Imaging Science, which although the programs do have similarities and can attract similar student profiles, they represent pretty different experiences and come from three different RIT colleges. So while we enjoyed the usual tour of learning about CIS labs and the research we do, the overall focus was more so on what different experiences can be expected between the different programs and what preparation is appropriate depending on the route she wants to follow. Later in the day she's visiting with other programs on campus, which should help give her a better feel for what she wants to do. While I'm not sure that Imaging Science is really where her passion lies, I am really glad she came to check us out because I think she has great potential with (at the very least) our other academic options such as minors and electives. Should she ultimately choose CE or IT/cyber security, I could see her building a powerful combination with Imaging Science. I hope to hear more from her in the future.

Touring season continues next week with another high school junior on Tuesday! Here's hoping my cold finally goes away once and for all so that I quit losing my voice.

*Cricket chirp*

Yesterday was our annual trip for the 6th annual DC-area alumni reception. As I mentioned before, this time we planned for it to take place in Baltimore so as to coincide with the SPIE Defense, Security, & Sensing conference that many of our alumni (many of them from DC) attend. You may recall that I also mentioned I was nervous... Turns out those feelings were proven. Well, let's start from the beginning.

• April 17, 2011: Visit DC, get ~40 people in attendance. Some people missed out because they were going to be traveling the next week for SPIE and wanted to spend their last weekend before it at home. 
• April 26, 2011: Host reception in Orlando for SPIE, get ~12 in attendance. Guests include many CIS faculty and students in town for conference.
• Summer 2011: Realize conference is in Baltimore in 2012. Given close proximity of the two alumni events, and the likelihood of DC-area CIS alumni attending SPIE, decide to combine events.
• Winter 2012: Plan Baltimore event. Decide on Sunday afternoon so that DC-area non-conference-goers can still come and not have to deal with traffic. Make event length long enough such that conference attendees just arriving in Baltimore can come. Reserve space down the road from site of conference.
• Spring 2012: Publicize event. Send more personalized invitations when initial registration turns out to be low.
• April 21, 2012: TWO people registered, with a handful of e-mailed maybes.
• April 22, 2012: Travel to Baltimore. Lousy weather makes travel uncomfortable. No one attends.

Wait, did I really just say that? That can't be right, can it?? Well, believe what you see, my friends. Nobody showed up. NOBODY.

It pains me to admit this. It makes us look bad. But I try to keep my blog honest, for better or for worse. This is definitely for worse.

What was it? Was it the timing? Was it the location? Was it the weather? What happened? The planning seemed logical. A number of us were involved, and we all thought it made sense. The drive from DC on a Sunday is 40 minutes - is that really so bad? What does this say about the worth of our annual reception that we put so many resources into? And what about conference attendees - were they not in town yet? What about our own CIS folks who were arriving on an afternoon flight at 1:10PM? We stayed until 4:30 just in case travel was delayed. We ended up giving our food away to the workers at the venue and any other patrons of the restaurant interested in trying something off the catering menu.

It wasn't all bad. I got to spend the day with my boss, one of our students, and our associate director of alumni relations, which was really valuable team building. We visited the aquarium (though it is probably 5th from the top on my list of best aquariums, but I don't want to sound like a TOTAL complainer - it was still good and had cool sharks and rays. But no touch tank? REALLY?). Our student's family made the drive from their home 2 hours away to join us, and they are absolutely wonderful people whom I always enjoy catching up with. The venue was phenomenal, from location to price to food. I almost beat Joe playing darts, and he's got, like, 4 decades of experience on me (not exaggerating at all... okay, maybe a little). So we all actually had a really good time... The only downside was, we didn't have anyone to share it with.

Our little group.
Sidenote: Could I have picked a more awkward position to stand in? Oh well, awkward was the feeling du jour.

Anyways, through a stroke of luck I was able to get onto an earlier flight home (Victory! standby list FTW), which was really good for me since I am still sick and walking around in the rain all day yesterday certainly didn't help. (Yes, I did think to bring an umbrella when I saw the forecast of 100% chance of rain; but since I was wearing a hooded rain coat I let our student use my umbrella.) I got home around 7:30, fell asleep by 8, and finally got a chance to try to sleep this bug off - which seems so simple but felt so incredibly fantastic.

So... Now what? I'm not sure what to do moving forward. Writing this blog entry and admitting my defeat was the first step. Now we are going to have to use this data to rethink our process in the future. But I'm not quite ready to think about that, yet.

Extra, extra! Hunt 2012! Major upset! FRESHMEN TAKE IT ALL!

Here we are for a rare Saturday posting... Why?? TODAY WAS THE HUNT!!!!11!!11!!1!!!

Why all the excitement? Only because this is one of the best days of the year. One that I have been leading up to for weeks now (in case you missed it: here, here, aaaaand here). One that, now that's basically over, I don't know what to do with myself. Hunt time is the best time.

So, how did it go? I can't even express how ecstatic I am. We had a great turnout: teams for freshmen, 2nd years, 3rd/4th years (neither classes are large, especially since most of this year's seniors already graduated, so they combined), and alumni (where were YOU, grad students?!). I'd like to think some of this is because I have been going around for weeks trash talking and trying to get everyone pumped up, but it probably doesn't really have that much to do with me. Either way, I don't care - I am just glad to see the Hunt restored to its past glory.

One thing that has broken with Hunt tradition, however - THE FRESHMEN WON. Say whaaaat! Two of the oldest rules of the Hunt are 1. The team who bribes the most wins the most and 2. Freshmen can't win. The only legends I have heard of freshmen winning was when all the other videos were SO horrible that there was no real competition. Usually, even if freshmen deserved to win, they weren't allowed to. But not this year! Since when did the competition become FAIR?

Sanctity aside... Okay, the freshmen totally deserved it. Their video was amazing!!! But there were definitely other major highlights: the 2nd years got one of their members to run through Tora Con as the sexy sax man, 3rd/4th years did an impeccable Kodak-themed parody of the angry Hitler video, alumni staged a top secret op to foil Dave Kelbe's office again... I don't envy the judges at all. What a phenomenal year - and hopefully the start of many more great Hunts to come.

Check out the complete results, awards, lists, and videos here!

Draft 2012

Cue fanfare, 2012's Summer Intern Interviews have CONCLUDED! Phew!

Monday-Thursday of this week from 3PM-4:30 my life was devoted to high school intern interviews. Each day I greeted the applicants, gave them a run down on what to expect, detailed the internship program, answered any questions, and lastly gave them one last pep talk before setting them loose on their interviews. Sounds easy, right? WRONG. There have been so many details, logistics, and materials to organize for this week, I have been running around practically non-stop. I suppose this has taken an extra toll on me since I am [STILL] sick, and having to talk for a half an hour straight has not been doing wonders for my already-hoarse voice. But enough with the whining, because honestly I wouldn't trade in this experience! I love meeting the intern applicants face-to-face, and it's especially interesting since I already feel as if I know them after becoming so familiar with their applications and e-mailing with them. We have such a phenomenal group of applicants, I wish we could take them all.

But alas! We cannot. Which is why today we held our intern "draft". In this process all the interviewers come together to vie for their top picks and make some deals so that everyone comes out happy. This year the whole process went surprisingly smoothly, in that all of the labs got their first choices and there weren't actually any conflicts! Whoa! So the process has concluded and now I know which applicants are getting offers - but for now it's still a SECRET - hee hee giddy me. Offers go out on Monday! 

Have a great weekend! (of suspense)

Hunt 2012: Bring It On

Nuff said.

This video covers almost 10 years worth of various Hunt highlights from members of the Alumni ALL STARS★. I'm getting excited - 1 week (and a day) left!

Lucky Number 7

Today was RIT's second Accepted Student Open House for 2012. As opposed to the big fat zero accepted students we had signed up for the first one two weeks ago, we had 7 today! Yes, SEVEN! I don't know if we've ever had that many signups for any one open house - this was almost more than we could even handle. But, it was great. The format for Accepted Student Open Houses is a little different from the fall events, in that there is no general College of Science session; students proceed directly from the opening session in the field house to their programs, where we then have about an hour with them before lunch. With 7 accepted students in attendance, all of them bringing 1-2 parents, along with the 3 of us who walked with them from the Field House, and 4-5 current students helping out, the Freshman Lab was full up to the brim with people. During the session we talked with the freshmen about what they're working on and what their experiences as students have been, answered questions about the Imaging Science program, and all went around and introduced ourselves. One of my favorite parts of meeting applicants is finding out where they heard about us - this group spanned "a current student visited my school and told me about it" to "I saw the video profile on Monica Cook" to "I met Bethany at a college fair" to "I was an intern" to "I visited during Fall Open House", and of course the ever-present random outlier, "I was looking around online and found it". This was more than enough to fill an hour, so then we headed over to COS for lunch where we all got to nibble on noms and chat for a while. After that, the accepted students and their families headed out on their own for various activities, presentations, and financial aid appointments.

I have got to say, we have a phenomenal set of accepted students this year. The group today covered the whole range of still-not-quite-sure to paid deposits, and everything in between; hopefully today's experience was enough to convince them to take the plunge. Everyone sounded like really great fits for the program, and today was a fantastic opportunity for the accepted students to meet each other and get a head start on possible future friendships. There was not a single applicant present that I would not want to see next fall. I got a really good vibe, so hopefully the feeling's mutual :-)

Hand over the Dayquil.

After 4 days of skiing and adventures, I'm back! And I've brought a cold with me - ugh. But I refuse to be "that guy" who takes a sick day after vacation. Either I caught my husband's bug from last week or I am experiencing ill effects from BEING SPLASHED BY AN ICEWATER TIDAL WAVE THANKS TO A SNOWBOARDER OVER 25 FEET AWAY. Yes that's right. Smart guy went across a huge puddle at the base of the hill next to the ski lift and sent an unavoidable 7ft tall wave right at me, soaking my entire body. He might have attempted an apology, but seeing as how this occurred at Mont Tremblant in Quebec whatever he said was in French - and for the record, I did not hear a "Je suis desole". I have no words. 

Anyways, it's time for final preparations before intern interviews next week - AND, there's an Accepted Student Open House tomorrow, which we have 7(!) prospective students signed up for!

Hunt 2012: Call me, maybe?

Speaking of Huntmisstress Nadya's bribes, another one was to make a version of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" music video (though she didn't specify whether it should be the official video or the Justin Bieber/Selena Gomez one). Using a combination of new videos we quickly shot yesterday afternoon and a bunch of clips from Hunt years past, the Alumni ALL STARS★ are pleased to present this masterpiece:

And with that gem, I'm off - I'm on vacation for a few days! See you on the other side.

THE HUNT 2012 THE HUNT 2012 THE HUNT 2012 THE HUNT 2012

It's also that time of year again - THE HUNT IS TWO WEEKS FROM TOMORROW!!!!11!!1!! (Wait, what the heck is the Hunt? Also see: http://youtu.be/AUDh0y3Thzo) And, I can get so excited about it this year, because there is actually an ALUMNI TEAM! Yes! I am thrilled to see this happen, because I tried 2 years ago when I was hunt mistress to get an alumni team going, and it totally fizzled. But this year, the interest was there, and now we're going strong. We have a secret Facebook group (shhhhh!) where we've been plotting and sharing ideas. There are even alumni ordering bribes on Amazon and shipping them to me to give to the hunt masters. Stay tuned - This is going to be epic.

Meanwhile, we've taken advantage of one of the huntmasters' bribes not only for advance notice of items on the list, but for our own amusement, MUAHAHA. Huntmistresses Nadya put "Wash my car" as one of her bribe items, and sent out an email to everyone saying that she was going to leave her car in 20 minute parking at 1:30 today so that any interested hunters could wash it, if they were so inclined. Well, the alumni ALL STARS★ team decided we were going to up the stakes a little and let everyone know, the game has begun:

It's almost time for our annual pilgrimmage to DC(ish)!

After weeks of planning, I can finally announce our plans for this year's DC-area alumni reception. This is the 6th year we will have hosted a reception for DC, VA, and MD alumni, but this time we are holding it in Baltimore to coincide with the SPIE Defense, Security, & Sensing conference (which many of our DC area alum attend). This makes me a little nervous, since I'm not sure what to expect attendance-wise with the change in location... But in the past, we had a reception in DC in April and then a small get together for alumni at DSS less than a week later, and it only made sense to combine the two what with DSS being in Baltimore this year.

This time around, Joe and I are attending as well as one student. Our plan is to fly down that Sunday morning, visit the Baltimore Aquarium, eat lunch, attend the reception, have dinner with the student's parents, and then fly home. It will be a long day, but if it's half as fun as last year I'm in for a really awesome trip!! 

Sunday, April 22, 2-4 PM
Baltimore, MD
Tir Na Nog
201 E Pratt St.
The Gallery at Harborplace

Register Here

Now that I'm a brochure designing MASTER, maybe I'll make a flashy new one for ImSci.

I've been working on a brochure for Staff Council for some time, and I am happy to report that as of today it is now DONE! I even asked President Destler to approve a quote for the back, and he got back to me within 5 minutes with a positive response. Way cool.

You can check out the brochure below (note, there are marks and bleeds around the edges):