The SUNY Center for Professional Development is hosting an awareness campaign for Professional Development Week, November 13–16, highlighting the important connection between lifelong learning, personal growth, and transformative organizational success. We hope you’ll take advantage of these refreshing opportunities. Whether it’s to learn something new or to reexamine your core values and strengths as a leader, there’s something for you. Registration is required.

Digital Badges and Other Ways to Document Faculty Development Activities
How is your campus helping instructors document and communicate what they learn in your programs? In this webinar, you will learn how digital badges can be used to assist faculty members with navigating their professional development paths. Participants are also encouraged to come to the webinar willing to share methods they have used to help faculty document their professional learning.

Using Microsoft SharePoint: An Overview from New Horizons
This session will provide a high-level overview of SharePoint functionality, including how to interact with SharePoint team sites; work with documents, content, and libraries; interact in SharePoint; work with lists; and integrate SharePoint with Microsoft Office.

Leading Change Efforts to Improve Campus Retention
For the past four years, SUNY Canton has worked to promote a "culture of student success and retention" using Kotter’s Change Model to support new and current retention efforts. Improvement has been noted in the college’s success indicators, with a 7 percent increase in retention and a 13 percent increase in graduation rates. This presentation will focus on how SUNY Canton used the principles of Kotter's Change Model to initiate new ways of thinking about student success.

Professional Adulting
Join a workshop discussion on developing key competencies for effective communication and teamwork. We will learn how to integrate self-awareness, empathy, and diplomacy for success at work and in the profession.

Building Your Foundation: Six Domains of Knowledge for Higher Education Leaders
Leading within a college or university requires more than effectively managing staff, making sure courses are scheduled, or responding to students’ demands. Rather, leaders in higher education, from department chairs to vice presidents, need to understand how to motivate and inspire their teams, demonstrate institutional commitment, be authentic, and bring people together to achieve a shared vision of student success. This requires individuals to have a strong sense of who they are as leaders, understand the institutional mission and context, understand the students they serve, and know what motivates their team. We have identified six domains of knowledge that we believe are critical for any leader in higher education to be successful in his or her role.

The Newman Center will celebrate Mass for the Feast of All Saints on Thursday, November 1, at 12:05 and 6:00 p.m. in the Newman Center Chapel, located at 1219 Elmwood Avenue. All are welcome.

Our loved ones are part of what the church calls the "Communion of Saints." The church commemorates these "saints" by celebrating All Saints and All Souls Day on November 1 and 2.

There will be time before and after the liturgy to inscribe the names of those we love in a Book of Remembrance. Our campus ministry staff will pray each day for all those whose names are inscribed in the book.

Buffalo State will host a Thanksgiving food drive to benefit None Like You/We Care Family Education Community Outreach, a nonprofit organization based on Buffalo's East Side. A long-standing partner of Buffalo State, None Like You will serve thousands of Thanksgiving meals to low-income families throughout the city in the coming weeks. Donations of Thanksgiving dry goods, including dried stuffing and mashed potatoes, and canned cranberries, squash, beans, and gravy, may be dropped off in the Civic and Community Engagement Office, South Wing 130, by Friday, November 2.

Please join the Teaching and Learning Center for a discussion of how to help students experiencing various forms of psychological distress on Tuesday, November 13, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Chase Hall 109. There has been a noticeable increase in the number of students on campus experiencing various forms of psychological distress. These issues can undermine a student's ability to learn and can pose challenges for those trying to help students learn. Offered in collaboration with the Counseling Center and Weigel Wellness Center, this session will take a case-study approach to a conversation about understanding student mental health and its impact on academic functioning.  Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

Please join the Teaching and Learning Center for "Myths and Fads in Education," presented by Reva Fish, associate professor of social and psychological foundations of education, on Tuesday, November 6, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Chase Hall 109. This workshop will explore various education fads and accepted beliefs about teaching and learning that are based on neuromyths with no research to support them, and will discuss alternative teaching practices that are supported by scientific evidence. Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

The fifth annual Western New York Blackboard User Group (WNYBUG) eLearning Day will be held on Friday, November 9, at Hilbert College in Hamburg, New York. Take advantage of this free opportunity to learn from your peers and interact with one another while gaining new ideas and perspectives about teaching and learning within Blackboard. 

Darcy Hardy, associate vice president for enterprise consulting at Blackboard Inc., will present "Defining Quality—Again—in Online Learning" in the morning, followed by sessions that touch on open educational resources, Blackboard Ally for accessibility, badges for motivation and completion, and ways to stay current with today’s rapidly changing technologies throughout the day.

Additional technology representatives from Blackboard, Ensemble, Modo  Labs, and Respondus will be in attendance. View the schedule and register online today.

The Grant Allocation Committee (GAC) requests proposals from individuals, departments, and student clubs and organizations for funding of programs, speakers, and events to take place during the 2018–2019 academic year.

The deadline for submitting applications under this funding cycle is Friday, November 16, for spring 2019 program proposals. Applications for funding and complete details of requirements may be found on the Student Affairs website. All proposals must be submitted electronically to marzolkl@buffalostate.edu with one hard copy delivered to Cleveland Hall 513.

Questions about the GAC may be addressed to Kathy Marzolf, secretary 2, 878-4704.

Please join us for the professional development workshop "Fostering Institutional Collaboration: Mastering the Skills You Need to Successfully Collaborate" on Thursday, November 15, from 9:00 a.m. to noon in Chase Hall 109.

Within institutions of higher education, invisible (and sometimes visible) boundaries are organically created between units and people based on rank, class, seniority, authority, power, expertise, and function. To protect our job duties and the responsibilities of our units from outside influences and demands, we unintentionally create these buffers or boundaries; however, to effectively meet institutional goals and compete in the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous higher education market, it is imperative that all stakeholders work together across these boundaries to address institutional, divisional, and departmental challenges that cannot be solved in organizational silos. This workshop is for staff, faculty, and administrators who want to improve how they collaborate with other individuals or units. During this workshop, participants will learn how to

• create a safe environment for collaboration;
• develop the skills to effectively collaborate;
• identify how to manage collaborative projects with other units, colleagues, or institutional stakeholders; and
• identify campus technology tools that can make collaboration easy, effective, and productive.

Todd Benzin, educational technology specialist, will offer one-on-one training sessions on collaboration using campus technology upon request.

Light snacks will be provided. Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has directed that flags on all state government buildings be flown at half-staff from Monday, October 29, until sunset Sunday, November 4, in honor of the victims of the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and at a supermarket in Jeffersontown, Kentucky; he has also issued a call for peace and civility following a week of horrific shootings and attempted bombings.

"In the wake of these attacks, New Yorkers from all backgrounds condemn these assaults that are contrary to the proud history of our state and our nation," he said. "I am directing that flags be flown at half-staff in honor of the victims of the recent horrific shootings, and I join with all New Yorkers to call for peace and civility and to denounce hate in all its forms."

Please join the Chemistry and Physics departments for the seminar “Peptoid Combinatorial Strategies for Targeting Unconventional Biomarkers in Cancer,” presented by Gomika Udugamasooriya, associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Houston, on Thursday, November 1, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Technology Building 160. All students, staff, and faculty are welcome.

Abstract
We have been exploring peptoids, an emerging class of biologically amenable and easy-to-synthesize peptidomimetics with great drug-like properties, focusing on cancer treatment and imaging. We developed a unique on-bead two-color (OBTC) combinatorial cell screen to directly identify the highest specificity ligands for cell surface biomarkers out of on-bed peptoid libraries that has millions of permutations. Recent “unbiased” applications using this OBTC assay developed a new approach for targeting unconventional biomarkers such as structural proteins and lipids. For example, we identified a peptoid called PPS1 targeting lipid-PS, which is typically found in the inner layer of the cell membrane, but flipped to outer layer in cancer and tumor endothelial cells. More importantly, PS is found globally in tumor microenvironments, which makes it a global target as opposed to conventional protein targets that are highly heterogeneously expressed. Also, when we screened on cancer stem cells (CSCs), we identified a peptoid called PCS2 targeting plectin, which is a structural protein. Plectin is ubiquitously found on cytosol of normal and cancer cells, but localized onto CSC surface supporting metastasis.