The Buffalo State community is invited to a Continuing Professional Education Breakfast Series Special Topic lecture, "A Tribute to D. Bruce Johnstone," on Friday, April 21, from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. at the Center for Tomorrow on UB's North Campus. The speaker for this event will be Michael McPherson, Ph.D., president of the Spencer Foundation and one of the foremost economists of higher education.

Dr. Johnstone, former chancellor of SUNY, president of Buffalo State College, and vice president of the University of Pennsylvania, has announced his retirement.

heck-in and breakfast begin at 8:00 a.m. Due to the large number of attendees expected for this event, please register as soon as possible. See www.gse.buffalo.edu/eon/continuinged/hied.asp for additional details and registration form. To register by e-mail and pay at the door, please contact ksausner@buffalo.edu.

We have noticed an increase in fraudulent e-mail recently, especially those that appear to be from a bank or other business at which you may have an account. Many of these are not picked up by the Barracuda or Outlook junk mail filters, and may be delivered to your e-mailbox. These e-mails are characterized by some warning about your account status and a request for you to verify account information. There is generally a link to a Web site provided for this purpose.

Please be aware that banks and other reputable businesses would not request account verification from customers this way. Please do not respond to these messages or click on the links provided.

These are "phishing" scams in which the scammer uses these sites to collect personal and account information about you! The messages should be deleted.

Please note: STARS will not be available this weekend from 6:15 p.m. Friday, March 24, until 7:00 a.m. Monday, March 27. Work is being done on the database. If you have any questions, please feel free to call Ann Dennis at ext. 5122.

For the first time, all college undeclared students (0900 and 0901) will have an Advisement Hold placed upon their SABRE registration accounts. These holds will be removed by students' academic advisors during their individual advisement sessions and will thus help to assure undeclared student compliance with the college's mandatory advisement expectation.

This process will be coordinated by University College, who, for the most part, will both advise and remove the holds for undeclared students. The thinking is to help students understand and follow Buffalo State degree requirements and thereby increase the likelihood of both student retention and timely graduation.

While all undeclared students have been multiply notified about these advisement holds, it is equally important that their faculty also be informed. Please help inform undeclared students about Advisement Holds and how these holds will ultimately affect them.

All national and state flags will be flown at half-staff on Thursday, March 16, in memory of Assemblywoman Sandra Lee Wirth by order of Gov. George E. Pataki. Flags will return to full staff at the beginning of business on Friday, March 17.

All student, faculty, and staff personal and academic information is private and confidential, and is protected by various state and federal laws. Buffalo State College employees must, by law, protect the privacy of this information.

Failure to protect personal and academic information may result in legal action against offending employees. Employees accused of failure to protect confidential information that results in harm to an individual may not be covered by the Public Officer’s Law, and therefore not defended by New York State.

For more information, visit the Human Resource Management Web site.

Reminder: SABRE will be unavailable until March 29 to facilitate software upgrades in preparation for summer and fall registration. Faculty who normally use SABRE’s “compose notification” feature to send notices to their students may request e-mail distribution lists by class section from Computing and Technology Services. Please send a message to request@buffalostate.edu asking for a class distribution list. Be sure to include the call number and year/term of the section, and your full e-mail address (e.g., basinsjb@buffalostate.edu). The distribution list will be sent to your e-mail account overnight.

Please note: STARS will not be available this weekend from 6:15 p.m. Friday, February 24, until 7:00 a.m. Monday, February 27. Work is being done on the database. If you have any questions, please feel free to call Ann Dennis at ext. 5122.

The campus community is invited to attend a press conference this morning at 9:00 a.m. in the Campbell Student Union in which Assemblymember and Buffalo State College Distinguished Young Alumnus Sam Hoyt will announce he has obtained funding to begin the long-awaited renovation of the student center.

The SABRE system will be unavailable beginning at 8:00 p.m. Friday, March 3, and continuing through 1:00 a.m. Wednesday, March 29. Software upgrades and preparation for summer and fall registration will occur during this time.