William Gibbons, Ph.D. will join Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as the new Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) on August 1. A leading music scholar, Gibbons’ wide-ranging research explores the intersections of the arts, humanities, and technology in contemporary culture, especially in video games. He will help strengthen RPI’s unique, holistic approach to learning and discovery that foregrounds the human and social context of scientific and technological progress. 

Presented by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Storytelling and Memory will be performed by the Tanglewood Music Center’s Fromm Quartet at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Music and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer on Friday, August 2 at 7 p.m. Free admission is available by registering at https://webforms.rpi.edu/storytelling-memory-tanglewood-music-center.

The Undergraduate Department and the Teaching and Learning Collaboratory are excited to announce the winners of the 2024 seed project call for proposals. The purpose of the seed projects are to develop a project to the point that it is competitive for external funding. The projects test new pedagogical approaches or technologies that will impact student learning. The grants are in partnership with funding from Undergraduate Education and the Teaching and Learning Collaboratory. And to this point, we wish to extend a big congratulations to this year’s winners!

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Heidi Jo Newberg, Ph.D., professor of astronomy; Tom Donlon, Ph.D., a visiting researcher at Rensselaer and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alabama; and their team have recently published research that reveals a shocking discovery about the history of our universe: the Milky Way Galaxy’s last major collision occurred billions of years later than previously thought.