RIT History

The institute was founded as the Rochester Athenaeum in 1829, which later merged with the existing Mechanics Institute in 1891 to create the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute. In 1944 the Institute changed its name to Rochester Institute of Technology. The institute originally existed in downtown Rochester but encountered an eminent domain claim which took over some of its original land to create Rochester's I-490. In 1968, RIT, keeping its name, moved outside the city limits to the town of Henrietta, New York where it remains today.

Today RIT enrolls over 15,500 full-time, part-time, and distance-learning students. Associate's, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees are awarded. The institute includes a federally funded National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). The current president is William W. Destler, formerly a senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Maryland, College Park. Destler, the Institute's ninth president, took office on July 1, 2007, replacing Albert J. Simone, who retired after 15 years at RIT.