The Burchfield Penney Art Center celebrates its 50th anniversary on Friday, December 9, 2016, with an anniversary celebration from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m., presented free and open to the public as part of M&T Second Friday. To help mark this special occasion, we invite Western New York artists working in all media (visual art, video, light, sound, digital, performance, etc.) to propose site-specific installations and performance pieces to take place inside, outside, and throughout the center.

As the Burchfield Penney approaches its half-century mark, we encourage audiences to explore the center’s resources from fresh and unexpected vantage points. In addition, artists are invited take this opportunity to experiment with new ways to express themselves and interact with the public.

With the exception of the offices and back-of-house, the entire museum is available as your metaphorical canvas for the day and evening. (The gallery walls will be devoted to existing exhibitions, but the floor spaces in the galleries themselves may be used for other purposes. All selected works must adhere to accepted museum installation practices.) Artists are invited to select the location they wish to work with and in, rather than be assigned to pre-determined locations. For this reason, applicants must attend a brief staff-guided walk-through from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. on one of the following dates:

Thursday, September 15
Thursday September 29
Thursday, October 6

To RSVP or make alternative arrangements, please contact Heather Gring, Burchfield Penney archivist, 878-3216. Individuals, collaborations, and collectives are all welcome to apply. An honorarium will be offered to all participants whose proposals are selected.

Proposals are due by Friday, November 4. Please submit proposals using the online submission form. All proposals must be submitted electronically. Successful candidates will be notified by Friday, November 18. Please contact Heather Gring with questions.

George Besch, of Designing to Live Sustainably, will present "Preparing Western New York for Climate Change: What Do We Prepare For? Everything?” on Tuesday, September 20, at 7:00 p.m. in Classroom Building A209.

Mr. Besch will argue that, on the whole, we are as deeply in denial of the need to prepare for the effects of global warming as we've been about the phenomenon itself. He will review little-noticed evidence of the effects of climate change, even in Western New York, where we enjoy comparative advantages. Businesses in areas suffering greater effects of a changing climate are buying property here, in anticipation of a worsening crisis, while we remain blissfully unaware of the need to protect what we have.

Mr. Besch will engage the audience in a discussion and debate of climate modeling (simulating past climate change to predict the severity of future change), including the question of how far to project, vs. simply assuming the worst and taking action now.

This presentation is part of the WNY Chapter of the American Meteorological Society’s fall 2016 seminar series, hosted by the Buffalo State Geography and Planning Department's meteorology and climatology program.

Buffalo State will join the University at Buffalo, Canisius College, and Niagara University for the third annual Humanities Festival September 22–24. This year’s programming, “Renaissance Remix,” is focused on the idea of “rebirth,” from the fifteenth-century Renaissance through the Harlem Renaissance to today’s renaissance in the city of Buffalo. We’ll explore who benefits when ideas and economies are reborn.  

The festival features three days of talks, performances, discussions, and food, culminating with Renaissance Remix: The Faire, on the Buffalo State campus.

Thursday, September 22
6:30–8:30 p.m.
Downtown Public Library
Free
“The Economics of Segregation: A Town Hall on Race and the Buffalo Renaissance”

Friday, September 23
Keynote Lecture by Dava Sobel
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Dava Sobel, the former science reporter for the New York Times; frequent contributor to Audubon, Discover and the New Yorker; and author of Galileo’s Daughter, will deliver her talk, “The Rebirth of the Heavens,” at 8:00 p.m., with a book signing to follow. Tickets for Sobel’s keynote are $20 for general admission and $15 for students. A VIP reception will precede the talk at 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, September 24
Renaissance Remix: The Faire
10:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Buffalo State, inside and on the grounds of Rockwell Hall
A celebration of the rebirth of culture, inquiry, arts, and physical fitness

The Outdoor Faire, free and open to the public, features elements of the European Renaissance of the sixteenth century and Buffalo’s cultural resurgence. Activities and entertainment for all ages including music, Sonnet-Slam, participation in public art, demonstrations, and interaction in physical fitness, athletics, fiber arts, bicycling, and more. Join in on Kan-Jam, designed and developed in Buffalo; chalk art; and dance by local artists and students.

Indoor activities ($15 for adults, $10 for students, includes lunch from the Westside Bazaar) feature talks on Buffalo architecture, a discussion about novelist and activist Wendell Berry, films, Black Soldiers and Folk Culture in the Harlem Renaissance, and Iroquois revitalization, among many others.

For event details and registration, please see https://buffalohumanities.org.

AFP 2016: Engage. Lead. Improve the World is the Anne Frank Project's eighth annual social justice festival, held this year on September 28 and 29 in the Campbell Student Union Social Hall and Upton Hall galleries. AFP 2016 is free and open to students, faculty, staff, and the community.

Highlights:

• Exhibits and workshops by Buffalo State professors and staff
• Performances and discussions from local, national, and international guests
• Stories told by three survivors from separate conflicts
• Collaborations between campus offices and community organizations

Check out the schedule for this year's event, register as an individual or a class, and sign up to volunteer on the AFP 2016 website.

If you have questions, please call 878-5559 or contact Eve Everette, festival curator and assistant director.

Follow AFP: @annefrankprjct - Twitter | annefrankproject - Instagram | AFP on Facebook

Please visit Butler Library and see our tribute to the 35th year of Curtain Up Buffalo, as well as the decades preceding it. The display is in the library's lower lobby and runs through Friday, September 30.

Butler Library holds a substantial collection of local theater production memorabilia as well as a great number of circulating books dedicated to a variety of theater-related topics. Many items are on display courtesy of the Eleanor T. Murray Studio Arena Collection of E. H. Butler Library Archives and Special Collections.

The photos in this display and many others are located in the Digital Commons @ Buffalo State:

http://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/bcesheas

http://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/msheascrapbooks

http://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/saperformers

The third annual Western New York Blackboard User Group (WNYBUG) eLearning Day will be held on Friday, September 30, at Hilbert College in Hamburg, New York. Take advantage of this free opportunity to learn from your peers and interact and collaborate with one another while gaining new ideas and perspectives about online teaching, OER, gamification, and teaching with Blackboard. Register online.

Please join us for the 22nd annual PDS Consortium Retreat on Friday, September 30, from 7:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Ramada Conference Center in Getzville. This free event will begin with breakfast and a keynote address by Jevon Hunter, Buffalo State Woods-Beals Endowed Chair in Urban Education. Concurrent sessions highlighting clinically rich practice will follow. Teacher education faculty, teacher candidates, and school partners are encouraged to attend. All participants must register by Wednesday, September 21.

Today is the deadline for faculty and staff to submit information about their awards and grants for the Faculty and Staff Recognition Ceremony. Categories are significant awards and honors (state, national, international), significant grants ($50,000 or more), and previous SUNY awards (new employees only). Specific criteria and online submission forms are provided on the Faculty and Staff Recognition Ceremony web page.

The ceremony takes place on Thursday, October 6, at 12:15 p.m. in Rockwell Hall Auditorium and will honor this year’s recipients of the SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence and the President’s Awards for Excellence. The campus community is invited to attend, and a reception will immediately follow.

Please e-mail Patricia Alessandra in the Academic Affairs Office with any questions about the awards and grants criteria.

All elementary education majors, including undergraduate CED, CEN, CFR, CIT, CMT, CSH, CSS, ECC, ECE, and EXE, as well as graduate MIITC, are required to attend a mandatory student teacher orientation meeting from 3:00 to 4:15 p.m. on either Tuesday, September 20, or Wednesday, September 21, in Bulger Communication Center South. Students must attend one session.

Please e-mail Rosemary Arioli, director of student teaching for the Elementary Education and Reading Department, with questions.

The Institute for Community Health Promotion Collaborative Research Initiative (ICHP/CRI) is accepting graduate and undergraduate student applications for its Public School Mentoring Program for the fall 2016 semester. Applicants must be enrolled full time at Buffalo State College, have excellent written and oral communication skills, and have previous experience tutoring or working with groups of children in an educational setting. Undergraduate students must be at least second-semester sophomores with a minimum GPA of 2.5. Interested students should forward their current rsum to Gail Daniels, senior manager, ICHP/CRI.