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Originally founded as the Rochester Athenaeum, the institute later changed its name to the Mechanics Institute. The institute originally existed in downtown Rochester but was moved outside the city limits in 1968 to the town of Henrietta, New York where it is today. RIT enrolls over 14,500 full- and part-time students, with an approximate male-to-female ratio of 2:1. The institute includes a federally funded National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID).
The university is well-known for its engineering and photography programs. It also has one of the oldest cooperative education programs in the United States in which students hold a full time job for a period (while not taking classes) as part of their graduation requirements. The school year is divided into four quarters instead of two semesters. Whereas at many other colleges one would attend for two semesters and and take summer off, at RIT students generally attend fall, winter, and spring quarters.
The dorms and the academic sides of campus are connected with a walkway called the "Quarter Mile." On the academic side of the walkway is a courtyard with a sculpture of a mobius strip; on the dorm side is a sundial and a clock. These symbols represent time to infinity.
The current campus is housed on a 1,300-acre property. This property is largely covered with woodland and fresh-water swamp making it a very diverse wetland which is home to a number of somewhat rare plant species.
Due to the size of the land that the campus rests on, there is plenty of parking which is available free to all students and visitors.
With the addition of the Math and Sciences Building, R.I.T.'s campus contains more bricks than the Great Wall of China. The brick color used is actually patented by the institute.
The university consists of 9 colleges: