Services of the Nutrition Education Counseling Center are still available for all registered students to include one-on-one virtual sessions and group nutrition seminars. Appointments may be scheduled through the Weigel Wellness Center, 878-6711. Please see the NECC website for details.

The Math Center has an immediate need for both peer and professional tutors for the duration of the spring 2020 semester. Because the Math Center on campus is closed indefinitely, all tutors will be tasked with offering students support in a digital environment through remote online tutoring for the foreseeable future; therefore, all tutors must have Internet access and a device for accessing Blackboard Collaborate.

Please review the qualifications for each position outlined below.

Interested applicants should e-mail Erica Demler, coordinator of the Math Center, with the following information:

• Their name
• Whether they wish to serve as a peer or a professional tutor
• The course(s) they wish to tutor
• The name of a math or math education professor to act as a reference
• Their résumé
• Their questions

Peer Tutors
Peer tutors should be outgoing students from any major who enjoy mathematics and working with others. Note: Peer tutors must have completed and passed through Calculus 2.

Preferred Requirements: Current Buffalo State student; minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5; minimum grade of A- in all college math courses; recommendation from a math professor; personal interview. 

Acceptable Requirements: Current Buffalo State student; minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0; minimum grade of B+ in all college math courses; recommendation from a professor; personal interview. 

Compensation: Peer tutors will earn an hourly wage (e-mail Erica for more information).

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Professional Tutors
Professional tutors should be mathematics education graduate students who want to hone their teaching skills while providing essential support to our undergraduate students. Note: Professional tutors must have a bachelor’s degree in mathematics or mathematics education.

Preferred Requirements: Current Buffalo State graduate student; minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5; minimum grade of A- in all college math courses you hope to tutor; recommendation from a math professor; personal interview.

Acceptable Requirements: Current Buffalo State graduate student; minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0; minimum grade of B+ in all college math courses you hope to tutor; recommendation from a professor; personal interview.

Compensation: Professional tutors are paid biweekly (e-mail Erica for more information).

Please contact Erica Demler with questions.

Independent Health has created a special COVID-19 Coronavirus Update section for enrollees on its website. Enrolled employees are encouraged to create their own Independent Health member accounts so that they can receive updates about COVID-19, review their benefits, and have access to key details related to their plan. Independent Health has announced that all costs will now be covered without copay for COVID-19 testing, diagnosis, and treatment.

More information can be found on the Independent Health website or by calling the customer service number, (716) 631-8701.

The New York Democratic presidential primary election has been postponed to June 23, 2020. This gives students more time to register, change their address, or change their party affiliation. Students who aren’t sure if or where they are registered to vote can check the New York State Board of Elections website. Registering to vote takes just a few minutes, and the new deadline to register for the presidential primary election is May 29, 2020. Voter registration forms and more information are available on the Civic and Community Engagement and NYPIRG websites.

Please join us for a free professional development webinar, 7 Steps to Team Performance, presented by Mike Cardus, consultant and owner of Organizational Development by Mike Cardus, on Friday, April 10, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. 

Both virtual and face-to-face teams that are high performing and deliver consistent results come from a purposeful process and method that includes both behaviors and tasks.

How Will You Make Progress?

1. Develop and lead high-performance teams using an evidence-based model.
2. Facilitate leadership of teams.
3. Prevent and intervene for maladaptive team member behaviors.
4. Learn the steps to create buy-in for team projects from people who are outside the team.

Why Does It Matter?

Teams that are high performing and produce consistent results come from a purposeful process and method that includes both behaviors and tasks. These align with the goals, values, and commitments coached and evaluated throughout the lifespan of the team. This process makes your team better and makes you a more valuable team member.

What Are the Areas of Focus?

• Tools and techniques to create and lead resonant, high-performance teams that produce results and profit.
• Methods of increasing retention of talent while decreasing completion time of projects and tasks.
• Leadership methods of honing and using interpersonal and political skills that are needed to complete team projects and goals, leading to an increase in your value to the team and organization.

Please register through Eventbrite.  

From the Chair of the College Senate Bylaws and Elections Committee
Please note: the scheduled nomination and election process to fill the upcoming College Senate vacancies will proceed as planned.

Two at-large College Senate positions, one University Faculty Senate position, and one University Faculty Senate alternate position will become vacant on August 31, 2020. All full-time faculty and professional staff members are eligible to run for these seats provided they meet other eligibility requirements (see below).

At-large senators represent the entirety of the college. University Faculty senators are senators within both the Buffalo State College Senate and the SUNY University Faculty Senate. The alternate attends SUNY University Faculty Senate meetings only in the absence of the university faculty senator.

A call for nominations and information about candidates’ statements will be posted on the College Senate website. The call for nominations begins at 12:01 a.m. Monday, April 13, and continues through 5:00 p.m. Friday, April 17. Elections for these positions will run from 12:01 a.m. Monday, April 20, to 11:59 p.m. Friday, April 24.

Senate elections conducted by the schools of Arts and Humanities, Education, Natural and Social Sciences, and the Professions as well as the Professional Staff Caucus (PSC) should be concluded before the College Senate election cycle (April 20).

Eligibility: Current College Senate members who are completing two consecutive terms in their respective positions are not eligible for reelection. For additional information on eligibility requirements, please consult the College Senate bylaws.

Campaigning: The College Senate Elections and Bylaws Committee strongly discourages using college e-mail services for campaigning. Please limit campaigning to the candidate statement posted on the College Senate website, available to the college community on Monday, April 20.

Please note: Individuals running for a senator position in another election may not also run for at-large senator or university faculty senator positions while the other election is being conducted. If the other election concludes during the period when nominations for at-large or university faculty senator are still being accepted, eligible individuals may self-nominate for either position.

If you are interested in being a candidate, please contact Vince Masci, assistant to the College Senate, 878-5139. We look forward to your participation in the vital process of campus governance.

From the Chair of the College Senate
According to Section X of the State University of New York Policies of the Board of Trustees, the faculty of each SUNY college must have bylaws that specify a variety of important matters concerning the shared governance of that college.

In 2019, it was discovered that it was not clear that the Buffalo State College faculty had legitimate bylaws. More specifically, while the Buffalo State College faculty wrote and approved bylaws in the 1970s, at some point between 1977 and 1991, the local practice developed of referring to those bylaws as the “College Senate Bylaws.” This practice gave the impression that these were bylaws of the College Senate rather than bylaws of the college faculty. Moreover, the college faculty made numerous amendments to the 1977 version of the College Faculty Bylaws under the false impression that the bylaws they were modifying were the College Senate Bylaws. Owing to the confusion surrounding the status of these bylaws, at least some of these amendments are not legitimate, since they conflict with stipulations in the Policies of the Board of Trustees.

Upon recognizing the above, the College Senate Bylaws and Elections Committee worked with the college president and SUNY counsel to devise the following plan. The College Senate’s Bylaws and Elections Committee would construct College Faculty Bylaws that conform with the Policies of the Board of Trustees. In doing so, it would adopt the philosophy that the college faculty intended to change its bylaws in the same ways in which the College Senate Bylaws were amended between 1991 and 2009. Accordingly, the newly constructed College Faculty Bylaws would resemble the current College Senate Bylaws except where modifications were required for compliance with the Policies of the Board of Trustees, would clarify the system of shared governance embedded in these bylaws, or were requested to this system of shared governance by the College Senate or college faculty.

It was further agreed that, once these bylaws were approved by the College Senate, they would be put, as a whole, to the college faculty for approval and, if approved, proceed to the president, the College Council, and the SUNY Board of Trustees for approval and execution.

At its March meeting, the College Senate passed this resolution (DOCX , 66 KB) concerning the College Faculty Bylaws. The college faculty will vote on the approval of the bylaws included in this resolution the week of April 20–24. For further information about these bylaws or this vote, please contact Julian Cole, chair of the College Senate Bylaws and Elections Committee.

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 outbreak.

The Erie County Medical Center and many other hospitals in the Buffalo area are experiencing a shortage of N95 masks. Consequently, caregivers on the front lines are at great risk of being directly exposed.

If you have a sewing machine, materials, and some time, please consider making reusable masks to donate. Check out this demonstration on YouTube. A network of volunteers is also being organized on a Facebook group called #BuffaloResilence.

Please be sure to bookmark the Registrar's Office Forms and Services page. There is updated information on how to circulate and submit forms and links by e-mail. Most forms are now available as fillable PDFs.

Over the last week, there have been reports of “Zoombombing,” a phrase that refers to uninvited guests crashing video conferences to be disruptive.

Here are some suggestions to prevent any unwanted users from potentially joining your Blackboard Collaborate Ultra sessions:

• When creating sessions for your course, consider Adding the Blackboard Collaborate Tool Link to your Blackboard Course and making it visible to your students whenever possible. This enables only the students enrolled in your course to log in to Blackboard and join a session.
• When you do share a Guest Link for sessions you’ve created, avoid making the link public (on a website, for example) in order to limit access to only those for whom the session is intended. A web link in the content area of your course or a direct e-mail would be best.
• Create specific sessions with start and end dates when possible.
• For staff members with separate Blackboard Collaborate Ultra Supervisor accounts, be sure to set your password for access to your account based on our Tips for creating a secure password/passphrases.

When in a session, remember you can do the following:

• Use Session Settings to take away the ability of participants to share their video, share their audio, post in the chat, and draw on the whiteboard and files.
• Watch the Attendee list for uninvited participants.
• Mute all participants from the “More options” icon at the top of your Attendee list.
• Remove individual participants from the session using the Moderator controls icon to the right of individual names in the Attendee list.

For more information, please use the resources listed on our Blackboard Collaborate training page. This page includes video tutorials and includes support for students using mobile apps. This page also presents a link to all IT Knowledge Base articles about Blackboard Collaborate.