Father Pat welcomes the campus community to join him in the Newman Center Chapel for worship during Holy Week.

Palm Sunday, April 14
Lord's Passion and distribution of palms
Masses at 9:30 and 11:30 a.m.

Holy Thursday, April 18
Mass of the Lord's Supper
7:00 p.m.

Good Friday, April 19
Service for the Passion of the Lord
12:05 p.m.

Easter Sunday, April 21
Masses at 9:30 and 11:30 a.m.

The Newman Center is located at 1219 Elmwood Avenue, across from the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

The Buffalo State Alumni Association and Liberty Mutual Insurance Company will offer a defensive driving course for Buffalo State faculty, staff, alumni, and students on Saturday, May 4, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Ketchum Hall 113.

Save money on your auto insurance by taking this class offered through Liberty Mutual. Friends and relatives are also welcome if accompanied by a faculty or staff member, alumnus, or student. The discount is 10 percent off liability insurance in New York State, regardless of one’s auto insurance provider. This course will also remove points from your driver’s license. The cost of the class is $25 per person.

Attendees should park in Lot R-2 or along Rockwell Road and enter Ketchum Hall through the door on the west side of the building (across from Moot Hall).

To enroll, please call Damien Lawrence, Buffalo State’s local representative, at (716) 984-9111. The registration deadline for this class is Wednesday, May 1.

Please join Chartwells and the Nutrition Education Counseling Center for an overview of the Orange Dot program on Tuesday, April 16, at 12:30 p.m. in the Bengal Kitchen. Orange Dot is a new program designed to help students and staff choose healthier options while dining in the Bengal Kitchen.

We will discuss the program, what it includes, and how you can use it to build healthier meals on campus. Participants are encouraged to get lunch from the Bengal Kitchen and join us in the first side room to the left. (Refreshments will not be provided by the presenters.) We hope to see you there.

Faculty members are invited to submit applications for a three-day workshop designed to encourage the adoption of open educational resources (OERs) on campus. This initiative will provide select full-time and part-time faculty with an opportunity to bring more open, more affordable, and more accessible resources into their courses. If selected, participants will receive $500 after completing a three-day workshop Monday–Wednesday, June 10–12. The goal of the workshop is to provide faculty members with the time, resources, and necessary supports to transform their course materials.

Whether you’re not yet using OERs or you are hoping to use OERs more effectively, we encourage full-time and part-time faculty members to apply for the workshop. Applications are due Friday, April 26, and will be reviewed by the Open Educational Resource Advisory Committee. Please contact John Draeger, director of the Teaching and Learning Center, with questions about the program.

Please join us for a lecture featuring Htein Lin, Burmese artist and former political prisoner, and Vicky Bowman, director of Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business, on Thursday, April 11, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Mr. Lin and Ms. Bowman will address how the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business is promoting its work in Burma. They will also discuss the current Burmese political climate, and what the international community and the United States can do to help.

Htein Lin is known for his narrative paintings depicting life as a political prisoner and for his politically charged performances. From 1998 to 2004, Mr. Lin lived as a political prisoner in Burma, incarcerated for his beliefs. Following his release, the artist moved to London in 2006. His paintings hang in private collections throughout the world, as well as in the United States embassy in Yangon.

Vicky Bowman has been the director of Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business since July 2013. Before that, she led the global mining company Rio Tinto’s policy approach to transparency, human rights, and resource nationalism from 2011. She was also the director of global and economic issues and G8 sous-sherpa for the United Kingdom from 2008 to 2011, and head of the Southern Africa Department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the Government of the United Kingdom from 2006 to 2007.

This lecture is made possible by the Buffalo State College Grant Allocation Committee and the Burchfield Penney Art Center in collaboration with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Admission is free for Buffalo State faculty, staff, and students.

Join the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, Career Development Center, and Pride Alliance for our career search event today, April 9, at 3:00 p.m. in Bacon Hall 117. This is an excellent workshop for anyone who is job searching and will include extra considerations and information for LGBTQ+ job seekers. We look forward to seeing you there.

The search committee for the college's next director of the Honors Program invites the campus community to attend an open forum with A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, candidate for the position, on Thursday, April 11, from 12:45 to 1:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 217. The candidate will make a short presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. The search committee encourages the campus community to provide feedback by completing an online survey after the presentation. The survey will be open from 8:00 a.m. Thursday, April 11, through 11:00 p.m. Wednesday, April 17. Responses will be anonymous. View A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone's curriculum vitae (PDF, 206 KB). Please direct questions to Wendy Paterson, search chair.

The final Assessment and Reporting Seminar focusing on academic programs will be held on Thursday, April 11. The Institutional Effectiveness Office is offering this series of assessment and reporting seminars, open to all faculty and staff members, during the spring 2019 semester. Sessions have alternated between those focusing on academic programs and those focusing on co-curricular and functional areas. The intent is to assist academic programs and units, co-curricular programs, and functional areas with various areas of assessment and reporting, such as designing an assessment plan, using Taskstream, completing a department annual report, and developing indirect and direct methods of assessment.

Departments and units are encouraged to attend as groups of colleagues. Remaining dates and times are listed below. All sessions will be held on Thursdays during Bengal Pause, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., in the computer lab in Classroom Building A108. Please use the links below to select and sign up for a seminar.

For more information, please contact Luke Krieg, interim associate vice president for institutional effectiveness, 878-3838.

Focus on Academic Programs
April 11

Focus on Co-Curricular and Functional Areas
April 25

The campus community is encouraged to save a life during Intercollegiate Athletics' annual Spring Up Blood Drive, in support of UNYTS, on Sunday, April 14, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the college Sports Arena. All donors will receive a great Real Fans Bleed Orange T-shirt as well as free pizza. All donors will also be entered to win a $50 gift card from Wegmans, dinner for two at Chef's, and a $25 gift certificate to the Pearl Street Grill. For more information, please contact senior associate athletics director Tom Koller, 878-6514.

Please join the Chemistry and Physics departments for the seminar "Identification Methods of Microplastics," presented by Kris Hoyt, forensic science master's degree student, on Thursday, April 11, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Science and Mathematics Complex 173.

Microplastics (MPs) are defined as small plastic particles less than 5 mm in diameter and can be divided into primary and secondary MPs. Primary MPs are manufactured with a diameter less than 5 mm and primarily used as exfoliants and industrial abrasives. On the other hand, when large plastic pieces like bottles and bags break down into fine particles through photochemical or mechanical means, these are referred to as secondary MPs. MPs can cause significant damage to the lowest level of the marine food chain, potentially blocking the digestive tract and translocating to other parts of small marine organisms. The first step in potentially treating bodies of water for MPs is determining the quantity, location, and type of MPs within a specific body of water. The identification of MPs is an environmentally important issue because this may help track the source of the microplastics and stop the incoming flow of the harmful contaminants into the environment; however, fast and reliable ways to detect them have yet to be established. The first part of this talk will cover the treatment methods of MPs collected from the North Sea and the results of their analysis using Raman and FT-IR spectroscopy. Next, thermal degradation method coupled with thermal desorption GC-MS will be discussed, which was used to analyze MPs within water samples collected from the Rhine River. The strengths and weaknesses of these identification methods and the prospects for MPs research will be presented at the end of this talk.