Join Buffalo State and SUNY for the webinar Sustainability Strategies for Open Educational Resources today, March 9, at 3:00 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 120. This webinar kicks off Open Education Week (March 9–13) to raise awareness about the benefits of open educational resources (OERs).

Open resources, which can include full courses, course materials, lesson plans, textbooks, videos, and more, help students save money and increase their access, completion, and success rates. Research suggests that 60 percent of college students do not purchase all of their required textbooks due to cost. At Tompkins Cortland Community College, 698 students saved an estimated $69,800 on textbooks costs from 2011 to 2013, and a 26.7 percent increase in passing grades accompanied a 15 percent decrease in withdrawal rates, after an open textbook and other OERs were adopted for a psychology course.

Learn more about OERs through the self-paced tutorial Introduction to OERs. Please feel free to share with your colleagues and join the discussion on Twitter @OpenSUNY using the hashtag #OER.

The Active Major Chart is posted on the Banner web page with all the Master Schedule Files under Master Schedule Files – Major Codes.

The 17th annual Student Research and Creativity Celebration (SRCC) is open to both undergraduates and graduate students. This year's event is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, May 1 and 2.

Access to the online application will remain open for students through midnight Tuesday, March 17. After midnight March 17, students will be able to view their applications but will not be able to make any changes. Students cannot start applications after March 17.

Faculty mentors identified on SRCC applications will have through midnight Thursday, March 19, to review, edit, and approve application(s) submitted by their student(s). Only applications approved by the mentor are considered complete; incomplete applications will not be reviewed for inclusion in the SRCC.

SRCC applications are completed online.

Visit the Undergraduate Research website or scan the QR code on the event posters.

Note: Many resources are available to help students prepare abstracts and artist statements, design posters, and prepare talks. Be sure to plan ahead to take advantage of the "Early Bird" printing discount.

The nomination deadline for the Student Humanitarian Awards has been extended to Friday, March 20. Faculty and staff members are encouraged to nominate students who have demonstrated a commitment to humanitarian service for consideration of one or more of the awards listed below.

The Luis M. Antonetti Student Humanitarian Award
The Luis M. Antonetti Student Humanitarian Award recognizes a Buffalo State undergraduate student who has demonstrated personal character through encouragement of nonviolent beliefs and actions, volunteer service both on campus and in the community, and an ability to reach out to others with broad cultural acceptance. A plaque and award citing the recipient’s distinction is presented at a ceremony held in the spring, and the recipient may receive a monetary award, dependent on availability of funds.

The Minnie and Joe Engel Student Humanitarian Award
The Minnie and Joe Engel Student Humanitarian Award recognizes a Buffalo State undergraduate student who has demonstrated personal character through altruism, volunteer service, and the giving of oneself to the campus and the larger community. The Engel Humanitarian Award recognizes the full measure of a person’s worth, not just as a scholar, but as someone whose efforts on behalf of others define a quality of character that embodies core values that merit recognition. A plaque and award citing the recipient’s distinction is presented at a ceremony held in the spring, and the recipient may receive a monetary award, dependent on availability of funds.

The Phillip Santa Maria Memorial Award
The Phillip Santa Maria Memorial Award recognizes a Buffalo State undergraduate student who has demonstrated a well-rounded character, exhibiting not only scholastic achievement but also active participation in campus life at Buffalo State and in the Western New York community and a desire to improve the world. A plaque and award citing the recipient’s distinction is presented at a ceremony held in the spring, and the recipient may receive a monetary award, dependent on availability of funds.

Nomination forms are available on the Dean of Students Office website.

For more information, please contact Charles B. Kenyon, dean of students, ext. 4618.

The Employee Assistance Program and Weigel Health Center are collaborating to bring an informative program of smoking cessation to interested faculty and staff members. If you are a smoker who is struggling to quit, we urge you to join us, share your story, and get support. The program will include a casual discussion regarding the facts of smoking and how it affects your health as well as the options available to quit. We will provide resources for quitting and review the benefits of quitting. For those who qualify for and are interested in nicotine replacement therapy, nicotine patches will be provided free of charge as part of the program.

If you are interested, please e-mail Julie Nichols, nurse practitioner at Weigel Health Center. Date and time will be determined but will occur over spring break (March 23–27). Please reserve questions specifically about quitting smoking for the program itself.

Buffalo State is pleased to welcome internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson to campus March 12 and 13 for a workshop and premiere screening of her new film about campus sexual assault, It Happened Here.

Part of the Beyond Boundaries: Dare to Be Diverse Series, Jackson's appearance includes the
following events, which are free and open to the public:

Film Screening and Discussion of It Happened Here (2014)
Thursday, March 12, 7:00 p.m.
Burchfield Penney Art Center

Workshop on Documentary Filmmaking and Social Justice
Friday, March 13, 10:00 a.m.
Ketchum Hall 118

It Happened Here, a compelling new documentary from Emmy Award–winning director Lisa F. Jackson and producer Marjorie Schwartz Nielsen, explores sexual assault on campuses through the personal portraits of five students at three schools: Amherst College, the University of Connecticut, and Vanderbilt University. Featuring  testimonials from college administrators, educators, mental health experts, and legal scholars, It Happened Here breaks the silence surrounding campus sexual violence.

In raw and intimate interviews, students describe surviving a sexual assault only to be met with apathy, disbelief, blame, or retaliation from authorities when they tried to report the crime. Seeking only justice, the victims were ignored, belittled, or shamed while their attackers remained on campus with impunity. Rather than remain silent, they chose to speak out and push for institutional change.

Watch the trailer.
Read the press coverage.
Visit our Facebook page.

Beyond Boundaries: Dare to Be Diverse is co-sponsored by the Communication Department, the Equity and Campus Diversity Office, the I Love Consent Program, the Student Success Office, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, and the Grant Allocation Committee.

From the Diversity Program Coordinator
In honor of Women's History Month, the Equity and Campus Diversity Office invites you to a March Diversity Dialogues speaker panel, Women Entrepreneurs, on Tuesday, March 10, during Bengal Pause (12:15–1:30 p.m.) in Butler Library 210.

A panel of established businesswomen from the Buffalo area will offer insight into what or who ignited their interest in beginning a new business (or making changes to an existing business), advice on how they successfully achieved their goals, and personal inspirations. The session will include a question-and-answer period.

Please contact the Equity and Campus Diversity Office, ext. 6210, with questions.

The Professional Development Center will host "Speak and Be Heard: A Confidence-Boosting Workshop for Women" on Monday, March 16, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. in Butler Library 181B. Learn to convey credibility, command greater respect, and become more influential. This power-packed one-hour audio conference will show you how to speak up with composure and confidence, unearth self-defeating attitudes, and replace them with positive expectations. This session will offer tools and techniques to help you get past your fears and show you how you too can step up to any communication challenge.

Refreshments will be provided. Please register online via the CyberQuad Workshop Registration System. E-mail Lauren E. Turner, professional development assistant, with questions.

The Buffalo State Counseling Center, in conjunction with several campus departments, will host the sixth annual Mental Health Awareness Week from Friday, March 6, through Friday, March 13. As in previous years, the focus is on increasing awareness and improving mental health through holistic self-care and positive community engagement.

This year's kick-off begins with storytelling, music, and conversation with singer-songwriter and LGBT advocate Jennifer Knapp on Friday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Campbell Student Union Social Hall. Frank Warren, Creator of PostSecret, will speak on Tuesday, March 10, at 7:00 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center at Rockwell Hall.* Warren is the founder and curator of the PostSecret Project, a collection of over 1 million highly personal and artfully decorated postcards displaying soulful secrets mailed anonymously from around the world. The PostSecret website is the largest advertisement-free blog in the world.

A variety of other activities will be offered during the week, including daily tabling and presentations in the Campbell Student Union on suicide prevention (QPR: Question-Persuade-Refer), SafeZone, therapy dogs, Narcan (the opiate overdose antidote), and Evergreen LGBT resources and HIV testing. Also featured will be campus “UPstanders!”—members of our community who act on behalf of others; a panel discussion, “Out in Faith: LGBT Spirituality”; conversations about racism and minority stress; a letter-writing campaign to Ferguson, Missouri; RAD self-defense presentations by UPD; online self-help mental-health screening tools; and Buffalo State’s own PostSecret postcard-writing project. Come to movie night, and hear speaker Eric Thomas present “Greatness Is Upon You," sponsored by USG.

All events are free and open to Buffalo State students, staff, and faculty. For more information and a full schedule of events, please visit the Counseling Center website. Contact Suzanne Johnson, senior counselor in the Counseling Center, with questions.

* Presented by the Student Life Office, the Counseling Center, and Year of the Innovator.

Please join the Biology Department for the seminar "Of Pupfish and People: On the Value of Rare and Endangered Species," presented by Christopher Norment, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Biology at the College at Brockport, on Tuesday, March 10, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Technology Building 160.

All faculty, staff, and students are welcome.

Seminar Abstract
This presentation will use material from my most recent book of creative nonfiction, Relicts of a Beautiful Sea, to explore ethical and practical issues of conservation: Just what are rare and endangered species worth, why are they rare, and what would the cost of their extinctions be? Although Relicts of a Beautiful Sea focusesd on six rare desert species endemic to the Death Valley region of California and Nevada, my talk has much broader implications—as a celebration of ecology and evolutionary history, as a primer on water use and development in the arid Southwest, and as an argument for biodiversity conservation in this time of increased peril for many species, which has been described as the “Sixth Wave” of extinction.