The NYS & CSEA Partnership for Education and Training has announced a Statewide Targeted Tuition Program for Welding. This program provides additional tuition assistance to CSEA-represented employees who wish to take welding courses.

Currently, most CSEA-represented NYS employees are eligible to receive two tuition benefits per fiscal year. The Statewide Targeted Tuition Program for Welding allows eligible employees to receive up to two additional tuition benefits if they are taking a welding course.

More information can be found on the partnership’s website (PDF, 538 KB), by phone at (800) 253-4331, or by e-mail.

The NYS & CSEA Partnership for Education and Training has announced a Statewide Targeted Tuition Program for Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) that provides tuition assistance to CSEA-represented NYS employees who are formally enrolled in one of the following types of programs:

• a bachelor’s degree program in facilities engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or marine engineering; or
• an associate degree HVAC program; or
• a BOCES HVAC certificate or diploma program (440 or 900 hour); or
• an HVAC, electrical, refrigeration, boiler operations and maintenance, or plumbing certificate or diploma program at an accredited technical school or technology college.

Eligible employees can receive up to two targeted tuition benefits (vouchers or reimbursements). Each targeted benefit can cover one non-credit course up to $1,180 or one credit-bearing course, up to a maximum of 4 credits at the resident tuition per credit rate, not to exceed $295 per credit. Applications must be received by March 31, 2020, and courses must be in session sometime between April 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020.

More information can be found on the partnership’s website (PDF, 387 KB), by phone at (800) 253-4331, or by e-mail.

We are pleased to announce the NYS & CSEA Partnership for Education and Training's 2019–2020 Tuition Benefits Program for eligible CSEA-represented employees. The catalog and application form are available for download from the NYS & CSEA Partnership website.

Program highlights:

Eligible CSEA-represented NYS employees may apply for two tuition vouchers or tuition reimbursements. All applications must be received by March 31, 2020.
Any course taken must be in session sometime between April 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020.

Applications will be accepted by e-mail, by fax at (518) 486-1989, or by U.S. mail:
NYS & CSEA Partnership for Education and Training
Corporate Plaza East – Suite 502
240 Washington Ave Ext.
Albany, NY 12203

Educational advisement services are available to CSEA-represented NYS employees by phone at (518) 486-7814 or (800) 253-4332. For further information, please e-mail the NYS & CSEA Partnership.

The Buffalo State Great Lakes Center will host the seminar "Varied Response of Macrobenthos to Recurring and Abated Environmental Stressors," presented by GLC research scientist candidate Shivakumar Shivarudrappa, today, April 18, at 12:15 p.m. in Science and Mathematics Complex 161. Please come, and encourage your students to attend.

Abstract
The northern Gulf of Mexico (nGoM) contains more than 50 percent of U.S. coastal wetlands that provide innumerable ecosystem goods and services to humans. As a result of increased anthropogenic activities, nGoM is a site of the largest oil spill and hypoxic zone in the United States. Two different studies were conducted to assess the impact of these man-made environmental disasters on macrobenthos communities. Samples for the hypoxia study were collected between 2009 and 2010 from four sites with different hypoxia exposure history on the nGoM continental shelf. The Pearson and Rosenberg (P-R) model was used to assess the impact of hypoxia on the macrobenthic community. The bottom-water concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) was used as a proxy for organic enrichment to test the underlying principles of the P-R model. The results indicated a cumulative effect of annually recurring hypoxia on the macrobenthos. High values of species diversity, richness, and evenness at the least stressed site and low values at the most stressed site indicated the existence of a westward-diminishing hypoxic gradient on the nGoM shelf interrupted by the Atchafalaya River discharge. These results were consistent with the predictions of the P-R model.

Samples for the oil spill impact study were collected between 2013 and 2016 from six different sites in the subtidal zone adjacent to the Terrebonne Bay marsh in Louisiana. The community assessment indicated that the total abundance, species richness, and Shannon diversity of macrobenthos community increased in successive years from 2013, while evenness decreased. Although the community parameters showed increasing inter-annual trends, they did not exhibit any seasonal trends. The community dominated by suspension feeding polychaetes in 2013 shifted to deposit feeding crustaceans in 2016. Assessment of ecological health status using the multivariate AZTI marine biotic index indicated improving ecological conditions from 2013 to 2016. Macrobenthos community indicated clear spatial trends to hypoxia and distinct temporal trends to oil spill stresses. Influence of environmental variables such as sedimentary organic carbon, bottom-water DO, sediment grain size, and residual hydrocarbons present in sediment and water were examined to explain variability in the benthic community structure using multivariate analyses such as SIMPER, ANOSIM, NMDS, db-RDA, CCA, and PCA.

The Buffalo State Great Lakes Center will host the seminar "Varied Response of Macrobenthos to Recurring and Abated Environmental Stressors," presented by GLC research scientist candidate Shivakumar Shivarudrappa, on Thursday, April 18, at 12:15 p.m. in Science and Mathematics Complex 161. Please come, and encourage your students to attend.

Abstract
The northern Gulf of Mexico (nGoM) contains more than 50 percent of U.S. coastal wetlands that provide innumerable ecosystem goods and services to humans. As a result of increased anthropogenic activities, nGoM is a site of the largest oil spill and hypoxic zone in the United States. Two different studies were conducted to assess the impact of these man-made environmental disasters on macrobenthos communities. Samples for the hypoxia study were collected between 2009 and 2010 from four sites with different hypoxia exposure history on the nGoM continental shelf. The Pearson and Rosenberg (P-R) model was used to assess the impact of hypoxia on the macrobenthic community. The bottom-water concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) was used as a proxy for organic enrichment to test the underlying principles of the P-R model. The results indicated a cumulative effect of annually recurring hypoxia on the macrobenthos. High values of species diversity, richness, and evenness at the least stressed site and low values at the most stressed site indicated the existence of a westward-diminishing hypoxic gradient on the nGoM shelf interrupted by the Atchafalaya River discharge. These results were consistent with the predictions of the P-R model.

Samples for the oil spill impact study were collected between 2013 and 2016 from six different sites in the subtidal zone adjacent to the Terrebonne Bay marsh in Louisiana. The community assessment indicated that the total abundance, species richness, and Shannon diversity of macrobenthos community increased in successive years from 2013, while evenness decreased. Although the community parameters showed increasing inter-annual trends, they did not exhibit any seasonal trends. The community dominated by suspension feeding polychaetes in 2013 shifted to deposit feeding crustaceans in 2016. Assessment of ecological health status using the multivariate AZTI marine biotic index indicated improving ecological conditions from 2013 to 2016. Macrobenthos community indicated clear spatial trends to hypoxia and distinct temporal trends to oil spill stresses. Influence of environmental variables such as sedimentary organic carbon, bottom-water DO, sediment grain size, and residual hydrocarbons present in sediment and water were examined to explain variability in the benthic community structure using multivariate analyses such as SIMPER, ANOSIM, NMDS, db-RDA, CCA, and PCA.

The application period for scholarships closes soon. Apply through the Campus Application Portal for Scholarships (CAPS) to be considered for fall 2019 scholarships. All applications must be submitted by Wednesday, May 1.

All members of the Teacher Education Unit (TEU) are invited to attend the Teacher Education Council (TEC) meeting on Friday, April 12, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. in the Grande Conference Room, Cleveland Hall 418. Current issues in teacher education and assessment will be discussed.

The Registrar's Office will no longer produce its "Important Deadlines/Dates" bookmarks after the spring 2019 semester. Information listed on the bookmarks is available electronically as part of the official Academic Calendar. Ceasing production will allow us to save money, afford us greater accuracy and flexibility (such as when snow days affect academic deadlines), and reduce our impact on the environment.

With student registration in process, the Registrar's Office and Information Technology Services would like to remind the campus community about advising PINs to help reduce confusion or miscommunication that may affect students' ability to register for classes.

1. Advising PINs are assigned directly to individual students. No PINs are assigned to departments for use.
2. Neither the Help Desk nor the Registrar's Office holds the lists of advising PINs.
3. Up-to-date information on programs participating in the advising PIN program can be found on the Banner website.
4. Students' advising PINs (also called alternate PINs) can be found in the following ways:

• Advisers can see them on their Advisee Listing in Banner SSB (PDF, 77 KB).
• Advisers can see them through the Alternate Pin Lookup in Banner SSB (PDF, 308 KB). Please note: this option allows advisers to look up PINs for all students, even students who are not their assigned advisees.

Classical Tai Chi of Buffalo continues to offer free introductory Tai Chi classes every Sunday at 10:00 a.m. in Rockwell Hall 302. More information is available on the Classical Tai Chi of Buffalo website.