By Mary A. Durlak

The third annual Environmental Information Fair will take place on Tuesday, April 20, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Perry Quad, behind Campbell Student Union. The fair, sponsored by EVERGREEN and Environmental Health and Safety, will feature a sculpture contest and exhibits by more than 20 vendors.

“Every sculpture must be made from recyclable items,” said Lauren A. Bostaph, ’05, ’07, coordinator of the fair and assistant to Rich Saddleson, director of business services/property control. “Individuals, departments, offices, and student groups are all welcome to take part.”

Recyclable items include cardboard, CDs, disks, cassettes, DVDs, batteries, ink and toner cartridges, and bottles and cans, so the possibilities are endless. To reserve space for your work of art, call Bostaph at 878-6835.

EVERGREEN is the college’s all-volunteer environmental organization. “On the faculty-staff side,” said Bostaph, “it’s made up of people interested in improving the campus’s green sustainability.” Bostaph, a native of Little Valley, can’t remember a time when she wasn’t passionate about environmental issues. “Maybe it’s because, as a country kid, I grew up with an appreciation of nature,” she said. “When I came here as a student, I wanted more opportunities to recycle and re-use.”

EVERGREEN’s successes include the implementation of recycling plastic, glass, and metal in academic and administrative buildings, outside on campus, and in the residence halls. Later, recycling programs for electronic media such as CDs and disks, and supplies such as cartridges and batteries, were added. Bringing the Buffalo Blue Bicycle Program, a bicycle-lending program, to campus is another achievement. In March 2010, Bostaph suggested collecting used eyeglasses. “We donated 149 pairs to the Lions Club,” she said.

In the fall, the group’s efforts focus on raising environmental awareness among new students. From January to March, Evergreen tracks the college’s participation in RecycleMania, a national competition that promotes waste reduction on college and university campuses. When students leave the residence halls in May, Evergreen’s most ambitious endeavor—Don’t Throw It Out—takes place.

“Trucks are located outside the residence halls,” said Bostaph, “and we invite students to bring anything they aren’t going to take home. We collect clothes, furniture, shoes, food, and appliances, like TVs and mini-fridges.” Volunteers then sort everything, and distribute a list of available items to local nonprofits, such as homeless shelters, the Asarese-Matters Community Center, and food pantries.

Next week’s Environmental Information Fair is EVERGREEN’s annual observation of Earth Day. Through displays, prizes, and giveaways—this year the student branch of EVERGREEN is giving away saplings—the event suggests ways to protect and celebrate the environment. This year’s participants include the Hawk Creek Wildlife Center, the Buffalo Zoo, Buffalo ReUse, Habitat for Humanity, the Olmsted Parks Conservancy, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

“With all the different displays,” said Bostaph, “we hope we offer something for everyone.”

The campus community is invited to attend the 53rd annual Honors Convocation today, April 15, at 12:15 p.m. in Rockwell Hall Auditorium. The ceremony will recognize 974 students for outstanding academic achievement. All invited students have earned a cumulative grade point average of 3.50 or higher and have accumulated a minimum of 45 credit hours at Buffalo State (30 for transfer students).

Krista Sheer, president of Kappa Delta Pi, will convene the ceremony, and Howard M. Reid, professor of psychology, will deliver the keynote address. Mark Severson, dean of the School of Natural and Social Sciences, will present the honors candidates to Interim President Dennis Ponton and Interim Provost Kevin Railey, who also will offer remarks. As a token of the college’s recognition, each student is presented with a Buffalo State Honors Convocation pin.

The Buffalo State College Chamber Choir will perform all musical selections, including the national anthem and the alma mater, “Our Finest Hour.”

Kappa Delta Pi and the Academic and Student Affairs Office are cosponsoring the event. A light reception will immediately follow the ceremony.

By Mary A. Durlak

Math and literacy are considered so important that they are the subjects used most widely to measure the performance of students in primary and secondary schools. However, despite their significance, these two skills are widely viewed as distinct and separate.

Ellen Friedland, associate professor of elementary education and reading, is a literacy specialist who spent her fall 2008 sabbatical investigating how literacy strategies can be integrated into the math classroom to improve students’ understanding of math. Literacy strategies are instructional strategies used by teachers to help students develop skills in the language arts—reading, writing, speaking, and listening—and to facilitate comprehension in content areas such as social studies, science, foreign languages, and, of course, math.

“With my coauthors,” said Friedland, “two articles are in revision for possible publication.” One is aptly titled “Collaborating to Cross the Math-Literacy Divide: An Annotated Bibliography of Literacy Strategies for Mathematics Classrooms.” Pixita del Prado Hill, associate professor of elementary education and reading, and Susan McMillen, professor of mathematics, are the coauthors.

One of Friedland’s goals was to add to already-existing data that explores how math teachers integrate literacy strategies into math instruction. She completed an extensive literature review, reading more than 140 articles and books about middle- and secondary-school math preservice and in-service teachers’ attitudes toward, and integration of, literacy strategies. She also conducted research by observing, videotaping, and interviewing teachers integrating literacy strategies into their math instruction.

“Any organizational strategy is a kind of literacy strategy,” Friedland explained. For example, when teaching geometric shapes, a teacher can ask students to memorize the respective definitions of a parallelogram, a rhombus, a square, and a rectangle. However, a teacher can also use a semantic feature analysis, a grid that presents the shapes in relationship to each other. “Students understand difficult concepts better if literacy strategies are effectively integrated into content area instruction because they help students learn how to think,” Friedland said.

Friedland’s efforts to encourage content-area preservice teachers to integrate literacy strategies into their lesson plans extend to including field experience as part of their coursework. “Preservice teachers can see how it works for themselves,” she said. “They also develop a lesson plan that integrates literacy strategies.” She developed a course specifically for math and science education students.

“One of the good things to come out of this effort is that we’ve been taking an interdisciplinary approach,” said Friedland. “We learn so much from the different perspectives, and we are finding we have common ground. For example, both math and language use symbols to convey meaning.”

The data Friedland obtained from her sabbatical research was used for a presentation at the annual conference of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics in 2009, given by Friedland, del Prado Hill, and McMillen. Friedland also developed an annotated bibliography of resources to help in-service math teachers find appropriate literacy strategies.

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Read previous Focus on Sabbatical stories:

Felix Armfield
Lisa Berglund
Betty Cappella
Ann Colley
Daniel Cunningham
Michael De Marco
Rob Delprino
Mark Fulk
Musa Abdul Hakim
Katherine Hartman
David Henry
Susan Leist
Andrew Nicholls
Wendy Paterson
M. Stephen Pendleton
Stephen Phelps
Jean Richardson
John Song
Carol Townsend
Jonathan Thornton
Aimable Twagilimana
Mark Warford
Michael Zborowski

Voting for at-large and University Faculty senators continues until noon on Friday, April 16. All eligible voters were sent an elections letter announcing the elections for 2010. Electronic voting is available on the 2010 electionspage of the College Senate Web site.

Please check with Slade Gellin, professor of technology and senate parliamentarian, with questions regarding e-voting, or the College Senate Office for general questions or concerns, at 878-5139.

From the Chair of the Senate Curriculum Committee

Correction
CRJ 355 was incorrectly listed in the April 8, 2010, issue of the Bulletin as CRJ 365.

Advanced to the Senate Curriculum Committee
The following has been received by the College Senate Office and forwarded to the Senate Curriculum Committee for review and approval:

New Course:
ADE 645 Program Design for Organizational Employees. Prerequisites: Graduate status, ADE 608, ADE 610, and admission to the adult education master’s degree program or multidisciplinary studies master’s degree program or instructor permission. A practical approach using a design team in training and development integrating adult learning and instructional design theories for the analysis, design, and development of employee/volunteer programs for targeted organizational learners; use of authentic evaluation and assessment concepts to design programs and workforce learner evaluations. Students work in a virtual, simulated environment to experience the challenges of practicing the critical competencies of program design, development, and evaluation.

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Advanced to the Interim President
The following have been approved by the Senate Curriculum Committee and forwarded to the interim president for review and approval:

New Course:
ADE 582 Introduction to Adult Literacy Education in the U.S.

New Courses and Intellectual Foundations Designations:

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
FLE 201-T Introduction to Technology in Foreign Language Education

ARTS
THA 107 Theater Performance for Non-majors

Course Revision and Intellectual Foundations Designation:

ORAL COMMUNICATION
EDU 400 Practicum in Elementary Teaching I

From the Chair of the College Senate
The next meeting of the College Senate will be held at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow, April 16, in Classroom Building C122. The agenda can be found on the College Senate Web site.

From the Senior Adviser to the President for Equity and Campus Diversity 
The following faculty and staff members have been selected to receive the 2010 Muriel A. Howard Award for the Promotion of Equity and Campus Diversity:

Barish Ali, Visiting Assistant Professor, English
Satasha Green, Assistant Professor, Exceptional Education
Elizabeth Kelley, Assistant Professor, English
Rudy A. Pompert, Men’s Soccer Coach, Intercollegiate Athletics
Jennifer S. Hunt, Associate Professor, Psychology
Irene Sipos, Lecturer, College Writing Program

Award recipients will be recognized at a special luncheon on April 27. Selections were made based on nomination essays written by students that attested to the recipients’ promotion of respect for diversity and individual differences in classroom and out-of-classroom experiences.

The Social Work Department will also be recognized for its outstanding infusion of diversity into the curriculum and projects of the department. Drew Kahn, chair and professor of theater, will be recognized for the outstanding Equity and Campus Diversity Program Grant Project, which supported the Anne Frank Project. Finally, 14 projects funded by Equity and Campus Diversity Program Grants will also be recognized at the luncheon.

From the Interim Provost
The campus community is invited and encouraged to read and comment on the current draft of the Academic Plan (PDF). The progress report on the development of the current plan and the plan itself are available on theAcademic Affairs Web site. Anyone with comments is encouraged to send them to both Elisa Bergslien, chair of the Academic Plan Committee, and Kevin Railey, interim provost.

Christopher Pennuto, associate professor of biology, has received a $381,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to increase the number of minority students pursuing graduate studies in biology.

Undergraduate Research and Mentoring program (URM) students will participate in a two-year research experience in aquatic and watershed ecology, resulting in presentable and publishable research. The overall goals of the program are to increase diversity representation in biology, with a special focus on recruiting Native American students, and to improve postbaccalaureate research success.

“Minorities are extremely underrepresented in this field, and the National Science Foundation has recognized that by making the investment to improve minority success,” Pennuto said. “Through this grant, we are trying to create a research culture for these students. By immersing the participants in a scientific community with their peers, it will be a mind-opening experience.”

Taking advantage of two state-of-the-art facilities—the Great Lakes Center and the Point Peter Brook instrumented watershed—the project will utilize faculty expertise from the departments of Biology, Geography and Planning, and Earth Sciences and Science Education to create a watershed research institute.

The URM program will accept nine students for the initial two-year period, which will feature courses, research, social functions, and a seven-day watershed dynamics immersion workshop. Funding will be made available to renew the grant for an additional two years based on the progress of the initial program.

From the Interim President
I have approved the following curricular items, which have been recommended by the appropriate dean, the College Senate, and the interim provost:

New Program:
Minor in Asian Studies

New Courses:
CRJ 355 Crime Analysis
CRJ 440 Drugs, Crime, and Drug Policy

New Course and Intellectual Foundations Designation:
WORLD CIVILIZATIONS
HIS 445 History of Women and Gender in the Middle East

Course Revision:
ENG 452 Studies in Drama