The institute was founded as the Rochester Athenaeum in 1829, which later merged with the Mechanics Institute in 1891 to
create the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute. In 1944 the Institute changed its
name to the Rochester Institute of Technology. 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 remains today. RIT enrolls over 15,300 full- and part-time students, with
an approximate male-to-female ratio of 2:1. 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 Albert J. Simone, the institute's eighth president.