The Civic and Community Engagement Office is providing information about ways faculty, staff, and students can be active citizens and support our community during the coronavirus pandemic.

Do you have a special connection to Chautauqua County? The Chautauqua County Crisis Response Fund was created to support a centralized funding pool that will rapidly deploy flexible resources to organizations that are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

During our remote work environment and as we continue with remote instruction over the summer, please be mindful of the importance of communicating our availability over the Memorial and Independence Day holidays.

• Memorial Day will be observed on Monday, May 25, and all offices are closed.
• Independence Day falls on Saturday, July 4. Please note that the state has not designated an alternative day of observance for Independence Day in 2020. It is a "pass day" holiday. Under the state’s attendance rules, all eligible classified and unclassified employees will receive equivalent compensatory time off for the holiday, which is noted on the time and attendance records. Use of the holiday time should be requested in advance and approved by the supervisor. Please note that the holiday time cannot be used before July 4, 2020, and must be used before the holiday recurs.

Please post notices in advance in your offices (if applicable) and on your website, use the out-of-office automatic e-mail replies, and change voice mail recordings so that students and other employees are aware that the office is not available. These messages should provide information on whom to contact in case an issue requires immediate attention.

For more information on holidays, please visit the Human Resource Management website.

If you have questions, please contact Jamie Warnes, officer in charge, Human Resource Management, 878-4822.

From the Chair of the Institutional Innovation Advisory Council
The Institutional Innovation Advisory Council (IIAC) is excited to report that more than 50 percent of the campus community (928 out of 1,844 employees) responded to the Campus Culture and Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Survey earlier this semester. Buffalo State College conducted this survey to better understand our collective workplace, campus culture, and employee engagement and satisfaction, and how these factors affect institutional performance. This high response rate will enhance the college’s ability to better understand the complexity of our lived workplace experiences and priorities, and the needs of our campus community. This, in turn, will help us identify strengths to leverage and areas for improvement that can be addressed through immediate short-term cross-divisional initiatives and long-term strategies to be embedded in the college’s next strategic plan.

In order to ensure these beneficial outcomes and to accurately represent the narratives of the many faculty, staff, and administrators who took the time to write comments, it is essential that the results of the survey be carefully analyzed. The high volume of qualitative data generated, specifically, 2,070 total comments, which equates to 169 pages of text and 98,631 words, combined with the current COVID-19 crisis, mean that the IIAC does not have the capacity to perform this kind of analysis before fall 2020. To address this, the council will explore working with an outside partner—within the college’s current budget constraints—to assist in the analysis and interpretation of the data.

Given these considerations, the IIAC unanimously voted on Tuesday, April 14, to move the sharing of the report to the fall 2020 semester, while also acknowledging flexibility may be needed in this process as the campus continues to respond to COVID-19. The report will be shared through a series of town hall meetings (either in person or virtual), providing an opportunity for the campus to ask questions about the data and survey results, while also initiating discussions and focus groups that begin to address areas for improvements and how to better leverage our strengths. The IIAC will issue a written report to the campus community summarizing the survey results, campus feedback, short-term strategies to immediately implement, and long-term strategies to include in the next strategic plan to ensure that Buffalo State thrives in the future. We will continue to provide regular updates to the campus community about the survey process.

From the Chair of the College Senate
All final reports from the College Senate standing committees, presented at the May 8, 2020, College Senate meeting, are now posted on the College Senate Standing Committees web page. Reports given by Vice President Barnum at the May 8 Senate meeting are posted along with the podcast. All reports and podcasts for past Senate meetings are available on the College Senate website. Please contact Vincent Masci, assistant to the College Senate, for more information.

From the Chair of the Bylaws and Elections Committee
The College Senate extends its congratulations to the following individuals who were elected as the official officers and standing committee chairs of the College Senate for the 2020–2021academic year at the Senate caucus on May 8:

College Senate Chair
Bhakti Sharma, Associate Professor, Art and Design

College Senate Vice Chair
Heather Maldonado, Assistant Provost, UFS Senator

Academic Plan Committee Chair
Carol DeNysschen, Chair and Professor, Health, Nutrition, and Dietetics

Budget and Staff Allocations Committee Chair
Mark Severson, Professor, Chemistry

Bylaws and Elections Committee Chair
Ramona Santa Maria, Associate Professor, Computer Information Systems

Curriculum Committee Chair
Meg Knowles, Associate Professor, Communication

Faculty and Staff Welfare Committee Chair
Maria Brickhouse, Coordinator of the Academic Center for Excellence, Educational Opportunity Program

Instruction and Research Committee Chair
Kimberly Kline, Professor, Higher Education Administration

Standards for Students Committee Chair
Laura Hill Rao, Director, Civic and Community Engagement Center

Student Welfare Committee Vice Chair*
Steve Macho, Associate Professor, Career and Technical Education

*The Student Welfare Committee is chaired by a student senator.

----------------------------------------------------

Congratulations to the following individuals who have won seats on the College Senate for the 2020–2023 term:

University Faculty Senator
Joseph Marren, Professor, Communication Department

Alternate University Faculty Senator
Amy Rosen-Brand, Associate Director, Student Accessibility Services

At-Large College Senators
Laura Hill Rao, Director, Civic and Community Engagement Office
Colleen Toledano, Associate Professor, Art and Design Department

----------------------------------------------------

Congratulations to the following individuals, who have been elected to serve on the College Senate representing the four schools and the Professional Staff Caucus:

All College Elections

School of Arts and Humanities
Timothy Bryant, Associate Professor, English
Peter Ramos, Associate Professor, English

School of Education
Steve Macho, Associate Professor, Career and Technical Educaiton
Angela Patti, Associate Professor, Exceptional Education

School of Natural and Social Sciences
Mark Severson, Professor, Chemistry (completing Michael Lazich’s term till 2022)
Suparna Soni, Assistant Professor, Political Science
Kevin Williams, Associate Professor, Earth Sciences and Science Education

School of the Professions
Saquib Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Engineering Technology
Michael Littman, Chair and Associate Professor, Business

Professional Staff Caucus
Kelly Boos, Executive Assistant to the Dean, School of Natural and Social Sciences
Andrew Garrity, Associate Database Administrator, Information Technology Services

The Civic and Community Engagement Office is providing information about ways faculty, staff, and students can be active citizens and support our community during the coronavirus pandemic.

Because of COVID-19, the Girl Scouts have suspended their door-to-door cookie sales this year, but you can still support America’s favorite cause-worthy cookie. Participate in the Cookie Donor Buy-Out and those cookies will be donated to our hometown heroes serving on the front lines of area hospitals, grocery stores, food banks, and more.

One hundred percent of the proceeds stay with our local Girl Scout Council.

Please visit the Girl Scouts website to learn more about all the ways the Girl Scouts have stepped up for our community during this time of crisis.

The Civic and Community Engagement Office is providing information about ways faculty, staff, and students can be active citizens and support our community during the coronavirus pandemic.

Do you have specialized skills such as accounting, graphic design, or communications? Do you want to match those skills to a project where you can have a high amount of volunteer impact in a short time?

Explore Catchafire. Catchafire is a national public benefit corporation that seeks to strengthen the social-good sector by matching professionals who want to donate their time with nonprofits that need their skills.

Learn how to strengthen your online and hybrid skills to enhance your course design and increase student engagement with the Online Course Development Series. This series prepares instructors to design, teach, and enhance online or hybrid courses using best practices of online teaching and learning.

There are currently two ways to participate in the Online Course Development Series:

Online Course Development Webinars
The Online Course Development Webinar series prepares instructors to design, teach, and enhance online courses using best practices of online teaching and learning.

This series consists of four webinars:

1. Setting Up Your Online Course Structure in Blackboard Learn (Tuesday, May 26, at 9:30 a.m.)
2. Designing and Evaluating Assessments (Wednesday, May 27, at 9:30 a.m.)
3. Creating Online Content and Learning Activities (Thursday, May 28, at 9:30 a.m.)
4. Fostering Interaction, Communication, and Collaboration (Friday, May 29 at 9:30 a.m.)

Register for each webinar in the Workshop Registration System.

Self-Paced Online Course Development Series
Learn best practices in online teaching and learning by participating in this self-paced series. This series prepares instructors to design, develop, teach, and enhance online or hybrid courses.

To access this series, please self-enroll in the “Online Course Development - Self-Paced” organization in Blackboard.

Please contact Brooke Winckelmann, instructional designer, with questions.

Mike Cardus, in partnership with the University at Buffalo's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, will present a free webinar, "Preparing for Back to Work Changes," on Friday, May 22, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. 

In this webinar, you will learn

• one innovation process that you can apply quickly to determine what new opportunities are emerging from this chaos;
• how other companies have completed the innovation process and applied relatively easy or clear changes to their work that have supported useful changes;
• leadership and facilitation skills that you can use to ask for employee and customer feedback;
• feedback that helps identify what to increase and decrease to better support your business needs by incorporating their input into your changes.

The program aims to increase the odds for you to identify opportunities when obstacles get in your way.

Please register through the Workshop Registration System. 

Mike Cardus, organizational development consultant, will offer a free webinar, "Organizational Design: Designing Trust-Attracting Organizations," on Thursday, May 21, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. 

Organization design is the skeleton of an organization. A good design supports a healthy flow of work, cash, people, and customers, while a bad design constricts these.

Expected learning outcomes: 

• Identify within your organization chart the current time-span measurement of your executive leadership staff.
• Explain how the current time span of your executive leadership staff supports progress or regress on your capacity-building efforts.
• Apply time-span measurements to determine areas of micro- and macro-management.
• Rewrite your organizational chart to reflect the current time-span measurement of each management role.

For more information about this workshop and to register, please visit the Eventbrite listing.