The start of the new academic year also commences a new academic theme: “Inconvenient Truths.” Faculty and staff are reminded to submit their ideas of “inconvenient truths” to University College as soon as possible. Ideas may reflect current teachings in the classroom.

Funding is available for guest lecturers and other events related to the new academic theme as well as BSC 101 and Intellectual Foundations classes. For more information, please contact Douglas Koritz in the University College office.

To learn more about the new academic theme, please read the March 20, 2008, issue of the Bulletin.

The ninth annual Faculty/Staff Research and Creativity Fall Forum is scheduled for Thursday, October 30, in the Houston Gym. Setup time is 9:00 a.m.; presentations will begin at 11:00 a.m. and will continue until 1:30 p.m. A buffet lunch will be provided for all participants and attendees.

As in past years, the goal of this forum is to develop, encourage, and support Buffalo State College faculty and staff research and creativity, and to make collaborative research endeavors and grantsmanship more accessible. This is an excellent opportunity to network with other Buffalo State faculty and staff and to identify common scholarly and creative interests that you may have. Every year, individuals comment that they enjoyed learning what others were doing and as a result, new collaborations were developed.

A page designated to the event will appear on theResearch Foundation’s Web site. The date for titles and abstracts/descriptions to be submitted electronically is Tuesday, September 30. To participate, please complete the online form.

All faculty and staff are invited to organize an exhibit to present current research, creative activity, or other scholarship. Individual, departmental, or group exhibits are welcome.

As of August 1, the contracted travel agency for the college is Albany Travel. Since Albany Travel is a New York State contract vendor, the agent fee charged for airline tickets has been reduced from $28 to $15, and from $15 to $5 for train or bus tickets. Employees can contact Albany Travel at (800) 774-0655 and speak to any of its agents to assist with travel arrangements. Although the college has changed travel agencies, the procedure for making travel arrangements remains the same.

Employees who travel frequently are encouraged to visit the Albany Travel Web site and complete a personal profile to help its staff serve them more efficiently.

Please call the Accounting Office at 878-4117 with questions.

All eligible classified and unclassified employees may observe the following holidays in academic year 2008–2009 without charge to accruals:

Labor Day
Monday, September 1, 2008

Columbus Day
Monday, October 13, 2008

Election Day*
Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Veterans Day
Tuesday November 11, 2008

Thanksgiving Day 
Thursday, November 27, 2008

Christmas Day 
Thursday, December 25, 2008

New Year’s Day 
Thursday, January 1, 2009

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 
Monday, January 19, 2009

Lincoln’s Birthday* 
Thursday February 12, 2009

Washington’s Birthday 
Monday, February 16, 2009

Memorial Day 
Monday, May 25, 2009

Independence Day**
Saturday July 4

*Election Day and Lincoln’s Birthday have been designated as “floating holidays” in lieu of fixed holidays for all employees except those represented by Council 82. UUP-represented employees observe Election Day on the day after Thanksgiving, Friday, November 28. Classes are scheduled on both floating holidays, soall other eligible employees will receive credit for a holiday on those dates and may arrange with their supervisors to use them on a date of their choice before the holiday recurs.

**Full-time employees entitled to observe holidays and for whom Saturday, July 4, 2009, is a regular day off will be credited with holiday compensatory time in lieu of the holiday (holiday leave), or vacation for Council 82–represented employees. Classified part-time employees who are regularly scheduled to work at least half time and are normally scheduled to work on the Friday immediately preceding the Saturday holiday shall be credited with holiday leave equivalent to the number of hours in their regular Friday schedule. As with floating holidays, this holiday must be used before the Independence Day holiday recurs.

Dean Reinhart was appointed interim director of the Admissions Office in July. Reinhart previously served as associate director of admissions at the college. He has more than 12 years’ experience in the college admissions field and previously worked at SUNY Oneonta, the University at Buffalo, and Syracuse University. In addition, he teaches at Buffalo State and speaks widely on higher education topics. His research interests include students’ successful transitions to college and the first-year experience. Reinhart holds a Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo.

Lesa Loritts, on leave from her position as admissions director, is working with the Institutional Advancement Office to improve our scholarship programs. Scholarship support is among the college’s highest priorities, and Loritts’s knowledge and experience will contribute greatly to the success of this special project. Loritts has worked at Buffalo State for nine years and has extensive higher education experience. She served as president of the State University of New York College Admissions Professionals (SUNYCAP) for 2004–2005. Loritts holds an M.A. from the University of New Haven.

Jill K. Singer, professor of earth sciences and director of the Undergraduate Research Office, has received the 2008 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, honoring her exceptional service to Buffalo State College and the State University of New York.

Chancellor’s Awards are system-level honors conferred to provide recognition for consistently superior professional achievement and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of excellence.

Singer has an outstanding research and publication record, which she has maintained while serving as a nationally recognized advocate of undergraduate research and creative activity. She is an active member of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) and served as chair of the Geosciences Division from 1998 to 2002 and as CUR president from 2003 to 2004. The National Science Foundation (NSF) recruited Singer to serve as a program director in the Division of Undergraduate Education from 2001 to 2003 and invited her to return for another two years (2007–2009).

Singer’s scholarly record reveals an impressive list of accomplishments. She has received grants totaling nearly $3.5 million from such funding agencies as the NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and she is the author of numerous peer-reviewed papers in geology and undergraduate research. She was a speaker for the National Association of Geoscience Teachers Distinguished Lecture Series, and she has spent more than 20 years researching sediment dynamics and river restoration.

Singer travels extensively across the country to speak at conferences and workshops relating to establishing and institutionalizing undergraduate research programs. Singer has modeled such programs in her own research, and her publications often feature undergraduates as coauthors. In the past 20 years, she has mentored or co-mentored more than 40 undergraduates.

In addition to her national activities and leadership roles, Singer has remained a passionate promoter of undergraduate research at Buffalo State. She was appointed director of the Undergraduate Research Office in 2003. As director, she established many campuswide programs, including the annual Student Research and Creativity Celebration, which recently held its 10th annual symposium.

The Chancellor’s Award will be formally presented to Singer at the college’s Academic Convocation ceremony on September 25 in Rockwell Hall Auditorium.

Charles J. Naughton, director of labor relations for the Town of Tonawanda, has been appointed to the Buffalo State College Council, and Howard A. Zemsky, managing partner of Taurus Partners LLC, has been reappointed as vice chair. Naughton will serve until June 30, 2014. Zemsky, who was appointed in 2000, will serve until June 30, 2015.

Naughton is an alumnus of Buffalo State College, earning his B.A. in political science, summa cum laude, while employed as a City of Niagara Falls firefighter. Naughton took his retirement from the Niagara Falls Fire Department in 2003, where he last served as a battalion chief. He attended the University at Buffalo Law School, which conferred upon him a juris doctor, cum laude, in 1988. Following his admission to the New York Bar, Naughton focused his practice on family and governmental law. He has served as the Niagara County human resources director, the Niagara County risk manager, and the Wheatfield town attorney.

Zemsky is managing partner of Taurus Partners LLC, a private equity and real estate investment firm with investments in Western New York and Southern Ontario. The firm has developed approximately 800,000 square feet of commercial office space in Buffalo during the past seven years, including adaptive reuse of the historic Larkin Company terminal warehouse, in conjunction with Zemsky’s partners at CityView Properties.

He is also a partner in Niagara’s Finest Inns, which owns and operates hotels and restaurants in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, including the Charles Inn, Harbour House Hotel, the Shaw Club Hotel, and the Colonel Butler Inn.

Zemsky serves on several local business and advisory boards. He is a director of Medical Recovery Management LLC, ABC Companies Inc., and MOD-PAC Corp. He is president of the Binational Tourism Alliance, vice chairman of the H. H. Richardson Center Corporation, past president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Martin House Restoration Corporation, and a member of the Buffalo State College Advisory Council and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority board.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in business from the University of Rochester.

The Buffalo State College community is delighted to extend a warm welcome to Mark W. Severson, Ph.D., the new dean of the School of Natural and Social Sciences.

Severson comes to Buffalo State from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where he was professor and chair of the Chemistry Department. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 1983, the same year he accepted a visiting assistant professorship at Oakland University.

Severson’s research interest is the study of molecular and ionic clusters of atmospheric importance and as model systems for solvation. He has published extensively and served as a referee for several journals, including the Journal of Chemical Physics, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. He has also served as a co-organizer of international research conferences on water properties at the Telluride Science Research Center.

As chair of Oakland’s Chemistry Department, he administered a department with 18 full-time faculty members and six staff employees. The department offered undergraduate and graduate degree programs, including a doctoral program and a secondary teacher education program. As chair, he led efforts to create new positions and oversaw three successful searches. He also initiated an effort to acquire large scientific instrumentation through external funding, primarily from federal granting agencies but also from private gifts. He raised his department’s visibility by putting faculty accomplishments forward, and he helped to formulate a curricular revision to the new general education program. The revision required all students to have the opportunity to take part in experimental laboratory experiences.

As dean, he plans to bring a collaborative leadership style to the school. “I have always been impressed,” he said, “by how difficult problems often prove to have simple solutions when the right people get involved.”

As the fall 2008 semester begins, I am delighted to welcome back to campus all of you who have been away for the summer break, and I thank all of you who worked hard preparing the campus for the upcoming academic year. I trust that each of you had a relaxing yet productive summer.

I am especially pleased that we are welcoming 42 new full-time faculty members to our campus community this year. This is the largest one-year increase in faculty that we have had in several years, and it will aid in our goal of increasing the number of full-time faculty. We are also delighted to welcome the many professional and classified staff members who have joined us over the past year.

Each new academic year offers new hope and fosters new learning opportunities for students, faculty, and staff. This year we welcome approximately 1,500 new freshmen and nearly 1,100 transfer students as well as 400 new graduate students. We expect total enrollment to exceed 11,000 students. About 2,200 students will be living on campus in our residence halls, and approximately 200 students will begin the semester residing in the Adam’s Mark hotel in downtown Buffalo. We are especially proud to welcome 17 Chinese students from the Sichuan Province of China, which was devastated by a massive earthquake in May. These undergraduates are among 150 Chinese students who will study at 22 SUNY campuses for two semesters before returning to China. I encourage you to make them feel at home during their time here.

This will be an exciting year, and I invite all faculty and staff to attend Academic Convocation on Thursday, September 25, at 12:15 p.m. in Rockwell Hall. Author, educator, and activist Lorene Cary will deliver the Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Academic Convocation Address and will receive an honorary doctorate of letters. At the event, we will celebrate a new year of scholarly excellence and embrace the academic theme for 2008–2010, “Inconvenient Truths.”

This summer we have had the opportunity to improve several campus facilities, underscoring our ongoing commitment to enhance our teaching and learning environment for students and faculty. We have installed smart classroom technology in 12 classrooms, lecture halls, and laboratories in Ketchum Hall, Rockwell Hall, Caudell Hall, and the Classroom Building. Construction on both the new science and mathematics complex and the technology building is expected to start in 2009.

This summer the turf was replaced on Coyer Field, securing safer, more consistent conditions for our athletics teams. Renovations to the residential dining center in the Campbell Student Union will be completed August 29, providing a fresh and welcoming setting that will lend itself to collaborative interactions between students, faculty, and staff.

Construction of the new Burchfield Penney Art Center is complete, and the building will be dedicated on September 5. Once artwork is installed, there will be a grand opening for members, the college community, and the public in November. At the new museum, learning opportunities for our students will be enhanced through collaborations between the museum and college faculty and students in all disciplines.

The college will undertake several signal endeavors this year that include completion of the planning process for our next strategic plan for 2009–2013, and a campuswide facilities master-planning process for 2008–2018. We look forward to engaging the campus community in each of these important initiatives.

Finally, as you know, the challenging fiscal situation facing New York State has prompted the state to propose ways to curtail expenses, including a 3.35 percent cut to SUNY institutions enacted in May. We continue to implement a plan of reduced spending and careful monitoring of all expenditures until more information is available.

Have a great semester, and I look forward to working with you as we strive to fulfill the mission of Buffalo State College to ensure the intellectual, personal, and professional growth of our diverse population and to inspire a lifelong passion for learning.

From the Editor

Thanks to everyone who completed the BulletinReadership Survey in June. Your responses have helped us to better understand your needs for the new faculty-staff newsletter, and we’ve made some adjustments in response to your comments.

All news items will now appear under the Announcementssection. Thursday morning e-mail notices will include Announcements headlines and a link to the Announcements section. Busy readers will find a consolidation of time-sensitive news here, while feature stories and events will appear under the Across Campusand Research and Creativity sections.

The Bulletin will now include monthly listings of grants and gifts to the college, as well as more news from the Human Resource Management Office—benefits, workplace policies, and personnel changes. We encourage faculty and staff members to continue to read the Bulletin in conjunction with the Daily for complete coverage of news and events at Buffalo State.

A copy of the Bulletin Readership Survey results is available upon request. Please feel free to send comments or suggestions anytime:collrel@buffalostate.edu or 878-4201. Thanks again for taking the survey, and as always, thanks for reading.