Tomorrow, February 28, is the last day to submit SUNY B-140W Tuition Assistance Program applications for the spring 2017 semester.

Staff members may apply for tuition assistance after six months of service; faculty members may apply after one semester of service. The following employees are eligible:

• Full-time Buffalo State faculty members and professional or classified employees
• Part-time or temporary Buffalo State faculty members and professional or classified employees who are employed at least half time (faculty members must teach at least two courses in the semester)
• Full-time Research Foundation employees, provided they work on the Buffalo State campus

Program funds may be used for courses at SUNY campuses only. Eligible employees may apply for a 50 percent waiver of SUNY tuition for up to two courses a semester, to a maximum of 15 credit hours an academic year. Tuition assistance is limited to regular in-state undergraduate or graduate tuition rates. The level of support may be adjusted when necessary if funding is not adequate to cover applications received.

After submitting an application, employees who decide to drop a class or find it has been covered by another source are asked to please notify Human Resource Management immediately to update their applications.

Please contact Human Resource Management, 878-4821, for applications and program guidelines.

The following Blackboard professional development workshops will be held in March:

Blackboard Learn 9.1: Utilizing Rubrics in a Blackboard Course
Blackboard Learn 9.1: Student Performance and Retention Center
Blackboard Learn 9.1: Achievement Badges
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra

Detailed descriptions of each training session (PDF, 64 KB) are available on the RITE website. All sessions will be held in Bulger Communication Center 122 or in a virtual webinar format.

All workshops are suitable for instructors teaching face-to-face, hybrid, or online courses. Workshop presentations will be one hour and are limited to 10 participants. The instructor will be available for an additional 30 minutes after each workshop for additional questions and discussion.

Please register online through the Workshop Registration website.

The EV grade is a permanent grade that will show on a student's academic record. The EV grade is defined as "failure, never attended." You should not assign a "Last Date of Attendance" when an EV grade is assigned to a student.

X Grade: When a grade is left blank on a submitted grade roster, Banner assigns an X grade. An X grade is defined as "grade not submitted." A grade should be submitted for each student on your roster. If the student did not attend, use the EV grade (for "never attended"). X grades posted to your rosters cause subsequent disruption to student academic records, leading to student inquiries and submission of grade change forms.

The spring 2017 grading window will open Monday, May 8, at 9:00 a.m. and close Wednesday, May 17, at 9:00 p.m.

RITE: Instructional Design and Training offers a four-workshop Advanced Blackboard Specialization Certificate. A new cohort begins in March. The workshops do not need to be taken in sequence or all at once.

Blackboard Learn is the official learning management system (LMS) at Buffalo State College that allows for dynamic learning to occur in the online environment. Earning an Advanced Blackboard Specialization Certificate will demonstrate your ability to enhance student learning and foster better engagement, interaction, and quality learning. This certificate is suitable for instructors teaching face-to-face, hybrid (blended), or online courses.

Please download the Blackboard Training Workshops (PDF, 65 KB) page to learn more about these professional development opportunities. For more information, please contact Michael DiFonzo, Blackboard trainer.

Faculty members will enter their spring 2017 grades using Banner. In preparation, faculty members are encouraged to log on to Banner to be sure that all their courses are listed under their accounts. Detailed documentation for entering grades (PDF, 191 KB) is available on the Banner website. Additionally, assistance is available by calling the RITE Support Desk at 878-4357 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. If you have any questions about grading, please call the Registrar's Office at 878-4811.

The spring 2017 faculty grading window opens Monday, May 8, at 9:00 a.m. and closes Wednesday, May 17, at 9:00 p.m.

The annual Design Student Exhibition is currently on display in Upton Hall's Czurles-Nelson Gallery. A reception for the artists will be held Thursday, March 2, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the gallery. The campus and community are invited to attend.

The Design Student Exhibition features a wide variety of creative work by our talented students in ceramics, fibers, communication design, design foundations, metals/jewelry, and wood/furniture. The exhibit will close Thursday, March 9.

For more information, please call the Design Department at 878-6032.

Please join us today for the mini-conference "Race and Social Justice in American Culture" from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Butler Library 210. The full program (docx, 30 KB) can be found on the English Department website. Light refreshments will be served. The conference is hosted by the English Department, the African and African American studies program, and the Women and Gender Studies Interdisciplinary Unit. Please contact Jennifer Ryan-Bryant, associate professor of English, with questions.

The second workshop in the Understanding OER workshop series, Creating and Sharing OER, takes place today from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Butler Library 314. Butler Library and Instructional Design and Training have created the workshop series to assist faculty members with finding, using, and developing open educational resources (OER).

The series concludes on Thursday, March 2, with Locating, Evaluating, and Incorporating OER, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Butler Library 314. Attend any one workshop to learn valuable task-specific skills related to OER, or attend all workshops to earn an ALMI OER Champion certificate. For more information or to register, please see the Open Educational Resources workshops in the Workshop Registration System.

Please join us for the lecture "Highbrow and Lowbrow Art," presented by Alex King, assistant professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo, on Wednesday, March 1, at 3:00 p.m. in Butler Library 210.

What is it to have "highbrow" tastes? Is it just being able to recognize good art? And how has this concept transformed over the past hundred years? Dr. King will address these questions as well as some critiques of "highbrow" taste, and will argue that, even if we reject "highbrow" taste, we can still hold onto the idea of art that is genuinely good.

Are you interested in discussing academic standards? Are you worried about declining academic standards? Are you worried about students who seem increasingly ill-prepared for college work? Please join us for the second part of this workshop on academic rigor on Wednesday, March 1, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. in Butler Library 181B.

This workshop will present a model of academic rigor that promotes actively engaging students in meaningful content with higher-order thinking at the appropriate level of expectation for a given context (Draeger et al. 2013). Through a series of interactive exercises, we will explore how to improve student engagement, how to uncover a course’s most meaningful elements, how to determine the forms of higher-order thinking most appropriate for a course, and how to modulate expectations for different student groups (e.g., majors, non-majors, tourists). Come and explore ways of promoting academic rigor and addressing the needs of underprepared students. Participation in the first part of the workshop is not required.

Presented by John Draeger, associate professor of philosophy, director of SoTL, and interim director of faculty development; and Pixita del Prado Hill, professor of elementary education and reading.

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

Draeger, John, Pixita del Prado Hill, Lisa Hunter, Ronnie Mahler. 2013. “The Anatomy of Academic Rigor: The Story of One Institutional Journey.” Innovative Higher Education 38 (4): 267–279.