Jason Bird from MetLife Financial Services will be on campus for individual consultations with Buffalo State staff and faculty members on Thursday, April 10. Sessions are by appointment only, between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. in Cleveland Hall 410.

Gain a greater level of confidence in your retirement portfolio. To schedule an appointment, please contact him at jbird@buffalo.nef.com or (716) 929-3378.

The Burchfield Penney Art Center will host Artists in Buffalo's second annual Spring Show on Friday, April 25, from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 26, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The show will feature the work of more than 30 artisans as well as specials in the Museum Store—and who knows what Jerry will cook up in Burchfield's Cafe!

This collaborative event will bring together invited artists and artisans for a unique gift show that will also serve as a fundraiser for the Burchfield Penney. All artists will donate a percentage of their sales to support the mission of the center.

A wide variety of functional and decorative art and artisan goods will be available for sale including textiles, pottery, jewelry, handmade journals, wreaths, glassware, purses, art prints, bath and body products, photography, note cards, and more. More information is available at www.burchfieldpenney.org.

Words at the Center, an event celebrating the written and spoken word in Western New York, will be held April 9–13 at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. A partial list of events appears below. The complete schedule is available on the Burchfield Penney website.

Wednesday, April 9
6:30 p.m.
Discussion: The Playgrounds Children Build for Themselves with UK-based Pop-Up Adventure Playground

Thursday, April 10
3:30 p.m.
Activity: Pop-Up Adventure Play Day

7:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading and Book Launch: Mortals and Immortals, celebrating the Burchfield Penney Poetry Series 35th Year Celebration Anthology

Friday, April 11
M&T Bank Second Friday

5:30–7:30 p.m.
Happy-Hour Activities
Drop-in workshop and live music with Doug “Trigger” Gaston Trio

8:00 p.m.
Poetry reading: Judith Goldman

Saturday, April 12
11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Slow Art Day, with discussions facilitated by Don Metz (11:00 a.m.), Marjorie Lord (noon), A. J. Fries (1:00 p.m.), Mary Kozub (2:00 p.m.), and Brian Milbrand (3:00 p.m).

1:00 p.m.
Presentation: Charles E. Burchfield In His Own Words with Tullis Johnson

1:00–3:00 p.m.
Performance: Michael Basinski and Buffluxus

2:00 p.m.
Reading: Tennessee Reed

4:00 p.m.
Performance: Steve McCaffery and Wooden Cities

6:00 p.m.
Conversation: The Local and the Global with Ishmael Reed and Jeff Simon

8:00 p.m.
Reading: Ishmael Reed (Tickets: $5 Burchfield Penney members / $7 students and seniors / $10 general public. Buy tickets online or call ext. 6011 during gallery hours.)

Sunday, April 13
1:00 p.m.
Tour: Alberto Rey

1:00–4:30 p.m.
Workshop: Plein Air Painting: Knowing When to Stop
(Cost: $35 members / $45 not-yet members. Call ext. 3549 or e-mail shirokkg@buffalostate.edu. Part of the International Center for Watercolor)

2:00 p.m.
Conversation: The Local and the Global with Anthony Bannon and Edward Sanders

3:30 p.m.
Poetry and dance: "3 Readers/3 Dancers/1 Poem," curated by John Lehrer featuring Ed Sanders reading his landmark poem "Poem from Jail" with Michael Basinski and Annette Taylor, with dancers Melanie Aceto, Leah Fiore, and Nancy Hughes. Buy tickets online or call ext. 6011 during gallery hours.

Are you teaching a new online course this fall? Instructional Resources will offer training throughout the summer for faculty members who are developing online courses for the fall 2014 semester.

The training includes five face-to-face group sessions, online resources, and one-to-one meetings with instructional designers who will support you as you develop your course.

If you are interested, please e-mail Ginger Bidell, instructional designer.

The Art Conservation Department invites the Buffalo State community to attend a lecture titled "Extreme Conservation" on Saturday, April 12, at 8:30 a.m. in Ciminelli Recital Hall. Featured speakers will be Lizzie Meek, programme manager – artefacts for the Antarctic Heritage Trust; Alan Phenix, scientist with the Getty Conservation Institute; and Malcolm Collum, chief conservator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. This is a great opportunity to hear about the conservation profession and the wide range of objects conservators treat across the globe. The admission fee is $15. For more information, please see the complete program on the Art Conservation website.

Art historian Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, curator of African art at Dartmouth's Hood Museum, will address the campus on Wednesday, April 9, from 3:00 to 4:15 p.m. in Upton Hall 230. His topic will be this year's Dak'Art exhibition, the biennial of contemporary African art that takes place in May 2014 in Dakar, Senegal. This event is free and all are invited.

The VSLC submitted an application for the President's Community Service Honor Roll last week to recognize Buffalo State's significant community service achievements. After collecting information from across campus, we determined that students, faculty, and staff completed 509,278 hours of service during 2012–2013!

The application is especially timely, as we are celebrating National Volunteer Week through ongoing events and activities this week.

The President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, launched in 2006, annually highlights the role colleges and universities play in solving community problems and placing more students on a lifelong path of civic engagement by recognizing institutions that achieve meaningful, measurable outcomes in the communities they serve.

Thank you to all who submitted data and information, especially those from the Professional Development Schools (PDS) Consortium, Anne Frank Project, I Am College Bound, Empty Bowls, and Community Academic Center who wrote project descriptions for the application. We will be notified in May or June whether we are awarded the honor.

The Anne Frank Project is calling for proposals:

AFP 2014: Change through Stories
September 8–10

We are asked to be flexible, adapt, and move forward in times of change, but that isn't always easy. Stories can guide us. Stories fuel or extinguish change: they are either expressed or suppressed. AFP 2014: Change through Stories is a laboratory and a meeting place for all disciplines to tell stories that inspire change, engage people in the lessons of those stories, and provide tools and vocabulary that encourage people to change their world.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ? Margaret Mead

For more information, please visit AFP 2014: Change Through Stories.

Proposals are due Tuesday, April 15: Proposal Guidelines

Questions? Contact Eve Everette.

Jeffrey Otterstein from VALIC Financial Advisors will be on campus for individual consultations with Buffalo State staff and faculty members on Tuesday, April 8. Sessions are by appointment only, between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. in Cleveland Hall 416.

Gain a greater level of confidence in your retirement portfolio. To schedule an appointment, please register online.

Marcelle M. Haddix, assistant professor and director of English education programs at Syracuse University, will present “Are You Still Helping That Community? Toward a Publicly Engaged Teacher Education and a Focus on Communities” on Thursday, April 10, from 12:15 to 1:25 in Ketchum Hall 313.

Working from a scholarship-in-action, community-engaged framework, Haddix will discuss ways that notions of communities and public engagement are defined and taken up in English and literacy teacher education. Her talk will feature examples from two areas of scholarship: The first involves a study of the ways students of color navigate the multiple discourse communities they inhabit as preservice teachers and their construction of teacher identities in the current climate of teacher preparation programs. Specifically, Haddix will highlight the ways that teacher candidates of color define public engagement and what it means for them to work with and within urban schools and communities. The second examines the experiences of secondary English and literacy preservice teachers enrolled in a Teaching Writing course where students coordinate and facilitate a community-writing event for local middle and high school students.

Across both areas, her talk will articulate new directions for encouraging community building and public engagement in English and literacy teacher education.

Haddix’s scholarly interests center on preparing all teachers for working within urban schools and communities and on increasing racial and linguistic diversity in English teacher education. Her work has been featured in Research in the Teaching of English, English Education, Linguistics and Education, Urban Education, and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. She also directs the “Writing Our Lives” project, a program geared toward supporting the writing practices of urban youth within and beyond school contexts.                 

Her talk, part of the Secondary Education Lecture Series, is presented by the SUNY Buffalo State English Education Student Association with support from the School of Arts and Humanities, the School of Education, and the English Department.