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.

Lend a hand to the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County by supporting its Virtual Community Baby Shower initiative. Stay home and support expectant mothers in our community by sharing words of encouragement (or wisdom) through virtual baby shower cards, hosting your own virtual baby shower, or donating critical items.

Parenthood can be overwhelming for anyone. It can be even more difficult for expectant parents who already struggle to make ends meet. And now more than ever, they need support. 

To learn more about the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County and the Virtual Community Baby Shower initiative, please visit the United Way website.

SUNY's Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology (FACT˛) will offer a free online symposium, "Responding in Real Time at SUNY to a Global Crisis: Managing the COVID-19 Crisis in the Spring and Planning for Fall," on Thursday, May 28, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Confronted with a worldwide pandemic midway through the academic year, the SUNY community responded by quickly moving to remote learning. This special event critically examines the many challenges and decisions that composed the response and then looks ahead to how we move forward, learning from the process, and how this experience has changed higher education. Students, faculty, and administrators will all participate in this one-day event, which will culminate with breakout sessions that include all attendees.

Experience stories of success and failure and explore how we can learn from both:

• How did the transition to remote learning work?
• What was the impact of policy and process in managing the crisis?
• What have faculty and instructional support teams learned about remote learning from those who adapted their courses?
• What social impact has remote learning had on the student and faculty campus experience?

Explore how necessity has fostered innovations in teaching and learning. Contribute to the conversation as we look ahead to fall and beyond.

This symposium will be delivered online in real time. Please register for this free event to receive access information, which will be sent about one week before the symposium.

Are you interested in integrating community-engaged learning in your courses but aren't sure where to start? Join the 100-plus Buffalo State faculty members who have become faculty fellows with the Civic and Community Engagement Office (CCE) and the Western New York Service-Learning Coalition. 

Faculty fellows training will take place virtually on Tuesday, June 9, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and Wednesday, June 10, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. Fellows must commit to attending the entire program.

Fellows acquire an in-depth understanding of service-learning pedagogy and are then supported through the process of converting an existing course or creating a new course that incorporates service learning. Time will be dedicated to exploring ways to maintain high-quality community-based learning in distance-learning environments.

Details and application materials can be found on the WNY Service-Learning Coalition website.

The application deadline is Monday, June 8, at 10:00 a.m.

Please contact Joy Guarino, service-learning faculty coordinator, or Tonya Ackley, CCE associate director, with questions.

In honor of the ninth annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 21), SUNY is launching SUNY Accessibility Week May 18–22. SUNY Accessibility Week is specially designed to provide informative, practical accessibility knowledge to enhance inclusiveness of digital content for users with disabilities.

Faculty members, instructional designers, distance education leaders, and others are welcome to attend one or more sessions offered throughout the week. Topics include universal design for learning, document and presentation accessibility (Word, PowerPoint, and PDFs), video accessibility, and STEM accessibility.

These webinars are free to SUNY campuses and will be recorded for your viewing convenience. Recordings will be posted on the SUNY Accessibility Week site on the Playlist tab.

Register now.

Employees may update their personal and campus phone numbers, home addresses, and emergency contacts and view their legal name, demographics, and education information in the SUNY System Administration’s Human Resources Self-Service Module.

Employees are encouraged to review their records annually to ensure that their information is accurate and up to date. Necessary changes may be completed or requested via the Self-Service Module. A user guide (PDF, 364 KB) is available to assist employees in accessing and using the Self-Service Module. Home address and legal name changes may also be requested by completing the paper form. Campus directory updates may be requested using the paper or online Directory Add/Update Form. Departments with multiple directory edits for their staff members may e-mail a list of the changes to Carey Seneca, assistant manager of personnel operations, in Human Resource Management.

Please e-mail Carey Seneca with any questions.

When issuing a student a non-passing grade, including an E, F, U, I, or N grade, please also report the student's last date of attendance when entering the grade online. This assists the Financial Aid Office in determining whether a student unofficially withdrew and whether the student is able to retain the aid he or she received.

The last date of attendance is the last date the student participated in class, took an exam, handed in homework, or actively engaged in an online course. If assigning an I or N grade, the last date of attendance is the last date you met with the student to discuss progress in the course. If you have no record of a student's attending, do not enter a date. Instead, use the grade EV, which indicates that the student never attended the course.

Questions regarding this policy or procedure should be referred to the Financial Aid Office, 878-4902. The grading guide (PDF, 162 KB) may also assist you.

Buffalo State College will experience planned Internet downtime affecting access to network services tomorrow, May 13, from 6:00 to 6:30 a.m. Services that will be inaccessible during this downtime include Remote Desktop access into any device in a campus office or lab, Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Collaborate, digital library resources, Degree Works, campus e-mail, and anything else you normally access by logging in to Buffalo State’s network. If you have any issues connecting after 6:30 a.m., please e-mail Buffalo State’s IT Help Desk or open a ticket.

Buffalo State College will experience planned Internet downtime affecting access to network services on Wednesday, May 13, from 6:00 to 6:30 a.m. Services that will be inaccessible during this downtime include Remote Desktop access into any device in a campus office or lab, Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Collaborate, digital library resources, Degree Works, campus e-mail, and anything else you normally access by logging in to Buffalo State’s network. If you have any issues connecting after 6:30 a.m., please e-mail Buffalo State’s IT Help Desk or open a ticket.

Buffalo State College will experience planned Internet downtime affecting access to network services on Wednesday, May 13, from 6:00 to 6:30 a.m. Services that will be inaccessible during this downtime include Remote Desktop access into any device in a campus office or lab, Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Collaborate, digital library resources, Degree Works, campus e-mail, and anything else you normally access by logging in to Buffalo State’s network. If you have any issues connecting after 6:30 a.m., please e-mail Buffalo State’s IT Help Desk or open a ticket.

Please join the campus community in congratulating our talented cohort of student participants in the 22nd annual Student Research and Creativity Conference, which celebrates our last class day of the spring semester. Over 200 projects representing all schools were mentored by faculty members from a wide range of disciplines. Digital SRCC 2020 presentation titles and abstracts are now open to public viewing, and full presentation downloads may be accessed with a Buffalo State log-in through the site's "Off-Campus Download" feature. Congratulations to all researchers, scholars, and creative artists across campus!