For every tiger that ever there was Will gather there for certain, because Today's the day the RIT Staff have their picnic

Today was the 16th annual RIT Staff Appreciation Day & Community Picnic! And it couldn't have fallen on a more beautiful day. 

Awwwww yeah: blue skies, ice cream, and gorgeous cars. Does it get any better??

The picnic includes a classic car show, rides in a vintage taxi (see above; though this was more of a heist than a ride, I even set off some kind of alarm or something....oops), mini golf, segway rides, info tables (which included my Staff Council brochure, which looks even better on paper might I add), a photo booth, and of course: FREE LUNCH! YES! 

This was my second year working the picnic (oh yeah, while I was away on vacation the Staff Council election results came in and I have been elected to another term - thank you, thank you, hold your applause), and this year I signed up for two shifts: handing out tickets redeemable for ice cream at a buffet line from 12-1, and crowd control at the photo booth from 1-2:30. So I made sure to get to the picnic early (around 11:15) so that I could eat before getting down to business. Catered by Brick City, there was salad, pasta salad, hot dogs (and hot sauce!), salt potatoes, roast chicken, and cooooookies.

Beating the crowds for first pick at the noms, that's how I roll

My day life was made complete when Ritchie came by and got his picture taken with me. I totally snuzzled in there.
(For the record, I have no idea who was in that suit, and no one would tell me.)

I had a great time handing out tickets at the buffet line, though I was surprised how many people said no to ice cream! What! I've decided this was the best job of all because I got to say hello to many of my favorites from around campus who came through the buffet lines. Though, on second thought, handing out the actual ice cream may have been even better, since there was only one line for that and I would have gotten to see EVERYBODY (except those spoil sports who didn't even want ice cream....)

1 o'clock rolled around and it was time for me to change shifts, which worked out well because the lines for food really started to dwindle around that time. I moved on to performing "crowd control" for the photo booth, though you can hardly call it that since the line never got more than 2 groups long. By the time half an hour passed, pretty much everyone was gone from the picnic, so I decided to give the photo booth a shot - but everyone I knew was long gone along with everyone else, so I was left to go in there all by my awkward lonesome. Therefore I decided that my photo strip needed to tell some kind of story, to make up for the fact that I was in there by myself. My "story" didn't really work - the first attempt was a miserable failure and the second didn't really make sense - and overall I ended up making the photos even MORE awkward than if I had gone in there taking myself seriously. So I went in there one last time and defaulted to a little good ol' fashioned school spirit.

Awkward photo booth attempts 1, 2, and 3.
1 and 2 mean to show a lonely bethy looking over her shoulder to see a lonely ritchie looking up at her (Brady Bunch style). The two are delighted to find each other in such a lonely photo booth, and decide to take a happy picture together.
For #3 I just spelled out RIT in ASL and then made a heart.
Overall, my favorite picture of all is the one of just a blank curtain. That's the money shot right there.

Overall, it was super fun and a really great day - around 2,000 people showed up! You can view a bunch of pictures from today's picnic here, and read some updates about the day in 140 characters or less on the RIT Staff Council twitter.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

HI! I'M BACK!

I have been gone for the past what-seems-like-forever on a two week whirlwind vacation in Europe! My husband and I flew into London on May 12, and were there for 3 days; then Paris for 4; Munich for 3 (though this was more like 2 once you take travel time into account), and Dublin for 3! WHOA! I had a wonderful time visiting multitudes of historical sites and monuments and attractions... but I have already had to tell my stories to so many friends and family that I am a little tired of going over it all. Plus it was all play and no work - like seriously no work at all - so this blog is not really the place to relate my whole trip. (If you really are dying to hear more, you are more than welcome to buy me lunch so we can go over it in person).

I went to the Eiffel Tower and this happened.
Leave it to me to have a perfectly good picture ruined by my hoodie drawstring slapping me in the face.

Luckily I came back in time for a holiday weekend, so I had a few days to relax at home before coming back to work today. And luckily on top of that it is right after RIT's Commencement, meaning campus is vewwy vewwy qwiet! So my transition back into working hasn't been too bad (....yet). My day was mostly spent catching up on everything I've missed for the past two weeks - e-mails, job postings, news articles, intern questions, etc. OH, and tripping out to THIS:

Yep, that's what my office looked like when I came in today! WHAT! Best return to work from a vacation ever. Yeah, I have the best job in the world.

Well, you know what they say: One minute you're in, and the next - you're out.

Today was Non-Traditional Occupations Day! This is the third time I have participated in this event, and each year it is a little bit different: the first year was for Greece Apollo 8th grade girls, and was held at a sports center; last year was again for Apollo 8th grade girls, and was held at a non-operating school; and this year NTO day was for Greece Athena 8th grade girls, held at Greece Athena. So even though this was my third time doing this event, I didn't have a whole lot to go on to predict how today was going to be with all the changes. After all, two years ago the event was miserable for me (sorry, organizers), but then last year it was one of my favorite events all year. Well, I would say this year ranked somewhere in the middle.

The format of the day was basically the same: first we had a keynote presentation (this year it was Dr. Anne Kress, President of MCC), then we did a What's My Line? style game, and then we broke off for the workshops/skills exercises. One of the major changes for this year was that we were in a large (fancy!) auditorium, which I think actually made a big difference. The keynote was much more formal, as was the event overall. Plus, it felt a little awkward having only 100 or so girls spread out amongst the front section of such a hugely vast auditorium. And, I think the darker atmosphere and comfy seating were making the girls sleepy, because the energy sure was lacking this morning.

The What's My Line part of the day went off fine. This year I was presenter #1, and my riddle went like this:.

Beams of light, day or night,

I work to find out just what is right.

Lasers, telescopes, and lenses are hot.

Sometimes it's an illusion, sometimes it's not.

But I can assure  you my job is quite nice

SEE for yourself, That is my advice.

Not bad, eh? Oddly enough, other than the fire fighter and police officer, I was probably actually one of the most obvious professions up there (what a strange feeling for me), because Dr. Kress highlighted optics in her keynote and mentioned light and lasers and lenses. Which - although she was using it as a plug for MCC - was actually pretty cool, because if any one of us can get any of those girls interested in optics or imaging, we all win.

Then came the skills booths part, which was not so positive for me this year. There were some setup challenges early on, that luckily we were able to get past, but my space was still awkward for the thermal-IR presentation that I was trying to do. I was up in the corner of the auditorium seating by the stage, which was not ideal for showing the output of the camera but I made it work by projecting onto a side wall. Unfortunately, the girls' seats were down quite a bit lower, and there was a fence above them between them and the wall - so often times their view was obscured. Also, the seating was a little more difficult to work around than normal classroom seating, but again I was able to make it work. More challenging was the fact that skills booth times were taken down to only 9 minutes this year, which is barely enough time to get into much. And then regardless of venue there's always the feat of going through 10 groups of about 10 girls each in rapid succession, which is exhausting no matter how you spell it.

Isn't this where they host the Oscars or something?
No??

This year, the girls did not seem nearly so into it as they did last year. I know that last year I had a mix of great and bad with mostly good, but this year I seemed to pretty much have a consistent "meh" with just a couple girls that seemed interested even in the least. I'm not sure whether it was the venue, or the change in audience (Athena vs. Apollo), the tone set by the keynote, or maybe I just wasn't at the top of my game today... but this year did not even come close to creating the same kind of magic that last year did. Then again, maybe I went in with expectations that were too high, since last year felt so awesome.

I still wouldn't write it off as being a "bad" event, and I certainly don't want to sound negative about my experience today. There was a lot of effort put into making today great, and it showed. But to be honest, I'm not totally sure whether I'd participate again. I think today's meh mood has rubbed off on me and led me to write a meh post. Sorry :-(

Considering the awkward setup and fact-paced timing, I unfortunately was not able to get any pictures from the event like I did last year. There was a photographer around for a while though, so if I ever see the results from that I will be sure to post.

On a more exciting note - This is me signing off for two weeks! I'm going on vacation :-). See you on the other side.

Interns 2012: Just that good.

I know I haven't posted much about the high school internship program since the Draft took place, but there has actually been a fair amount of behind-the-scenes work going on the past few weeks to prepare for the summer. As it turns out, in the days after the draft a few changes happened: an additional intern was picked up (because our pool this year was just that good, they made room for one more! (although if it were up to me I would have added even one more on top of that, but unfortunately it's beyond my control)); one applicant we extended an offer to respectfully declined; and an alternate was picked up to take that empty space. So even though the "final" decisions were made, there was still some flux in the actual intern assignments for another week or so. After that, as of a week ago the review of this year's applicants was finally deemed complete - so I present to you, the 2012 class of high school interns!

Well, not quite. I'm not going to list names here (for privacy reasons), though that will all be known in time once our interns are all processed and start keeping blogs of their own. In the meantime, what I can share is that we ended up making internship offers to 15 applicants: seven are girls, eight are boys, and they come from ten different schools. This ended up being a greater total number of applicants than we were expecting to take this year - we were originally figuring 8 to 12 - but like I said, they were just that good. I have a really good feeling about this year's group! (Although, they have really big shoes to fill; after all, I did call last year's group the best ever.)

This week I have been busy assembling packages of paperwork to send out to this year's interns in preparation for their first semi-official day of duty: in-processing. I'll have those finished and mailed out tomorrow (or Monday if I'm not totally finished before the mailman comes), so our interns will have just over a month to get all their paperwork in order. (If any interns are reading this, make sure you check your mailbox - the real one, not e-mail this time.) An exciting summer awaits!

Ooh, how official-looking. Makes me wish I had one of those self-inking rubber stamps that say "OFFICIAL" so I could slam it on there just for fun.

Busy bees are busy and so am I.

You may recall that just a little over a week ago I referred to the fact that RIT only has two seasons: winter, and recruitment. The busy season has continued since then, with several more prospective student visits!

First we were visited last Tuesday by a LeRoy High School junior who has already explored RIT at open houses for engineering programs and the like, but wanted to look into Imaging Science as well after finding us by looking through all of RIT's undergraduate programs. After we chatted for a while, I introduced him to the freshmen class - he stayed for the whole two hours and said he had such a great time that he didn't want class to end! Afterward I showed him around CIS for a tour. I'm not sure ultimately what program his interests will align with best (maybe a CS/ImSci double major, eh, eh???), but I think it's fair to say we left him with a great impression of Imaging Science.

Later in the week I met with a current RIT student who is interested in transferring in to Imaging Science. He's a current physics major but not really feeling passionate about it, and is hoping to do something more applied. He also has a personal interest in astronomy, is an amateur astrophotographer, AND wants to learn more about optics. He had already checked out the classes in the ImSci curriculum per Carl's suggestion and was definitely interested in them. Does he sound like a perfect fit for Imaging Science, or what?? So there wasn't much convincing to have to do on my end, but at least I was able to help by answering questions about internship opportunities, career options, and student life. I think we have a pretty darn good chance of him transferring over, which would be great because (totally unbiased opinion) I think his interests really fit in well with the Imaging Science program. And knowing how awesome and welcoming our current freshmen are, they would all integrate together really well.

Lastly, we had a current high school junior visit today who actually was a high school intern applicant, but removed herself from consideration after receiving an offer from the UofR Laser Lab intern program. Which is TOTALLY OKAY - really. I'm not hurt by losing one of our best candidates to someone else. I don't harbor any ill will. And besides, I can't - I'm cool with LLE - hey, my husband works there and loves it. So it's all good, really. Not awkward at all. Though now I'm making such a big deal out of it it is starting to sound awkward. It really isn't. Anyways... We followed a similar format as the LeRoy junior: chat, sit in on the freshmen class, go for a tour. She, too, stayed for the full two hours and had a really great time! And the feelings were mutual: I heard a lot of feedback that she left a phenomenal impression and would be a fantastic ImSci student if we could be so lucky as to earn her application. She also had a lot of really great questions when we chatted and when we went on the tour; she is obviously a very bright student. She is really interested in astronomy, but on our tour we had a great visit with Jason up in DIRS - and we all know that remote sensing folks think astronomers have their systems posted in the wrong direction. Teasing aside, hopefully the visit helped this student know more about the many possible applications of Imaging Science. I really REALLY hope that if she comes to RIT, whether it be in ImSci or not, that she stays connected with us in some capacity. I also suggested we have some kind of an intern field trip or swap day or something to that end - who knows, we'll see! Either way I definitely hope she keeps in touch.

Anyways, that should be the last of the prospective student visits, for the immediate future at least... But you never know when another one will just pop up. In the mean time, it will be nice to give my vocal chords a rest!

ImagingRIT - oh wait, I mean ImagineRIT

Am I the only person so accustomed to typing "Imaging" that I can't spell "Imagine" anymore? Maybe? Oh well.

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that ImagineRIT was Saturday!!! (And hopefully, if you live in Rochester, you were there - and if not, WHY THE HECK NOT?!?!) Seeing as how this was the 5th year for the event, everyone should hopefully know what it is by now so that I don't have to get in to a whole bunch of background. Basically ImagineRIT is like one great big huge sci-tech-art fair open house with all kinds of exhibits, most of them student projects, on display, all free and open to the public. And there is food and music and live entertainment... It is kind of a big deal, and if you didn't know this already, then you should probably just leave my blog right now because you must be lost. 

Blue sky, sun light... Hey wait, what's that? Why, it's a weather balloon with cameras strapped to it!

Anyways, the best of RIT was on display, the weather was beautiful, and let's face it I was there, so there's no wonder we had a record 35,000 attendees!!! If you have ever been to Imagine then you know how big and overwhelming it is, so I am not even going to try to summarize in a blog post. But, you can see some of the day's happenings as they happened over on the CIS Twitter feed as well as my own twitter (which you may have noticed suddenly come into existence just a few days ago), since I was busy running around all day keeping them both updated. I tried to hit up as many of the CIS-related booths as possible and tweet pictures of them (one example being the weather balloon above), so don't let all my walking and effort go to waste - check it out! 

So much Imaging Science going on in this picture.
Craniofacial Phenotyper structured light face scanner - built by imsci FRESHMEN.

Social media butterfly was just one of the hats I wore on Saturday, as well as auxiliary freshman support/booth greeter, traveling CIS rep, alumni relations person, summer internship coordinator lady, recruiter, nerd in last place, and general pal to the gazillion friends and colleagues past and present that I ran into throughout the day. Which, while I'm on the topic, holy crap I had no idea how many people I know!!! Spend almost 10 years at RIT as a student, alumnus, and staff person, and you'd be surprised how many people you are connected with. I ran into old friends, new colleagues, kids I had just presented to the day before (!!!!!), interns from last year, interns for this year, other intern applicants, accepted students for fall, Staff Council members, senior administrators.... the list goes on and on. Things really got ridiculous when even my dad was getting spotted by people he used to work with (he's been retired about 8 years). The whole day was non stop, "Hey!!!! How ya doin?!" Who needs reunions anymore? It was awesome.

Obligatory picture proving I was there.
Also a fair illustration of the most excellent coincidental coordination of my purple chunk of hair with the shirts designed by the freshmen. holla

Some major highlights of my day included:

• Having a conversation with some of the Greece Apollo kids on twitter (It's working!!!)
• Seeing said Greece Apollo kids actually come visit!
• ImSci swag machine
• Meeting/catching up with students' parents (no wonder so many of them are so awesome)
• Catching up with Steve Schultz & family (and getting a head start on recruiting the next generation of Imaging Scientists) 
• Seeing all the amazing exhibits across campus - one of my favs was the under the sea balloon world, even though it was kinda silly. It was way cool.
• Strolling around campus with my parents!
• & finding my brother's brick on the Legacy Walk, which was just installed last Thursday.

Some lowlights:

• Photo Tech Science stealing imsci thunder and making things uber confusing in the process (sorry to be uncooperative, but this really was upsetting to me, sorry)
• Finding a poster that basically rips off one I already made??!? THEY EVEN USE THE SAME FONT.
• Strollers. SO. MANY. STROLLERS.
• Losing my voice again, aw man! And I had just finally gotten it back!

But those lowlights hardly count, I merely posted them here for posterity.

Oh man, ImagineRIT was so awesome!!! Even just thinking back to it to write this post is getting me all excited again. Good thing I have next year to look forward to. Hope you'll be joining us May 4, 2013! (The awesomeness of this blog post is enough to convince you you want to go, right?)

@RITimagingsci Im hungry

Today was our annual Career Exploration Day for Greece Apollo 8th grade accelerated science and math students! This is my third year representing Imaging Science at this event, and today (just as in the past) the kids did not disappoint. This event continues to be one of my favorites all year!

The game plan was essentially the same as last year, with a few notable changes: due to scheduling conflicts, the hospitality/nutrition portion was replaced with IT; there were fewer students eligible to participate (~50 instead of ~80); the girls had not previously seen me (this year's NTO event isn't until next Friday, and is for Athena girls instead of Apollo); I was presenting in the new classroom (2155) instead of in the auditorium; and the weather today seems perfect if not a little cloudy, so hopefully the kids won't be complaining in their surveys about having to walk outside in the sun and heat (which was an overreaction in my opinion, but hey that's just me). Oh yeah, and like in Workforce Innovations this year, I incorporated Twitter into the presentation.

Another classmate [accurately] tweeted that this particular student pictured here was having too much fun.

One thing that definitely did NOT change from last year was the kids' enthusiasm and how much of a blast I had interacting with them. In fact, I think the Twitter integration even helped take things up a notch. It especially came in handy in the second group where some of the students were more shy and not interacting so much with me directly, but as it turns out were tweeting up a storm. Overall with both groups we had a lot of great interactions both personally and virtually, and I think the presentations also benefited from having Joe there to be the Ed McMahon to my Johnny Carson (and also, more literally, my tweet moderator). To check out the day's tweets, which include a ton of user-submitted photos, click here. Some of my favorites include:

• @RITimagingsci This is so weird http://pic.twitter.com/pWoG7Yki
• @RITimagingsci Bye bye Alexis http://pic.twitter.com/opDSRVVK
• And, of course... @RITimagingsci I may have to try out this "imaging science" in the future :D

If you ask me, I had a fantastic time and think the event went really great! But I don't have survey results from the 8th graders yet, so we'll have to wait and see whether this event really was as much of a win as I think it is ;-). But, if the looks on these kids' faces are any indication, I think they had a good time:

Check out that one kid's reaction!!! You know which one I'm talking about.

Just look at all those smiling faces.

Except maybe this girl, who didn't want to go in front of the camera so instead I turned it on her.

But see, it turned out okay!

Group 2 had a blast, too.

Some of our top tweeters.

Obligatory picture illustrating that I was doing something #1

Obligatory picture illustrating that I was doing something else

To view a bunch more images, click me!

And that's about it for this blog entry - It's Friiii-day, Friii-day - so I am about ready to pack it up and call it a day. Especially since I will be right back here all day tomorrow - FOR IMAGINE RIT, woohoo!!!!! But hold up, one last thing- 

BAHAHAHAHAHA inadvertent Joe Pow photobomb

The envelope, please.

Yesterday I had a somewhat different role to play - Science Fair Judge! I originally got connected with this event two years ago through one of the research staff here in CIS. She knew of a science fair in Geneseo looking for volunteers to judge the submissions. I volunteered, but was assigned to judge kindergarten kids - so while I thought it was fun to participate, I did not consider it a worth while use of my work time (what kind of return could I possibly expect on that investment?). So last year I skipped it, but when the calls to volunteer came around this year I must have been feeling more generous or something, because I stepped up. This time I requested to judge 8th graders, so at least there would be a chance for me to slip in some nods to CIS/RIT and consider an afternoon outside the office legitimate work.

There were about a dozen projects submitted by 8th graders, about half of them to do with astronomy in some way. As it turns out, they had recently done a unit in their science class about astronomy, so many of them pursued it for their exhibits. Projects spanned from the big bang, to gravitational forces, to craters, to constellations, to the Coriolis effect. Other non-astronomical projects included map making, pressurized potato gun building, erosion studies, and a study into people's likelihood to pick up litter on the street. The projects were graded via a rubric with items pertaining to the display, knowledge of the student, and presentation skills, but we were able to qualitatively choose our winners at the end based on overall performance. This fair is a little different, though, in that students had various types of exhibits they could choose from: research and present, experiment, build something, and one other I can't remember but which was not done by any of the 8th graders anyways. While this approach is interesting and broadens the scope of projects students can do, I do not think it is conducive to fair judging - no matter what, a fully thought out experiment with a question, research, hypothesis, data collection, analysis, and conclusion is pretty much always going to prove most impressive and thorough. And, it did - But I can't get into specifics about who won, because I'm not sure when the results are being announced! So for now, they are still in a sealed envelope (literally - that's how we submitted the winners).

Anyways, I was able to throw in a few shameless plugs for Imaging Science, our intern program, the Sustainability college, and ImagineRIT, so all in all I think my job was done!

This was not one of my exhibits to judge (it was by younger kids), but I appreciated its Image Microstructure subject matter. If only the 8th graders did anything so Imaging Science-related, my ulterior motives would have been way easier to act upon...

Appreciation card and chocolate! holla