Anthony J. Day, superintendent of the Sweet Home Central School District, will be a guest speaker at the General Education Faculty Interest Group meeting on Friday, November 2, from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. in E. H. Butler Library 181B. This session will focus on the P–12 perspective of the purpose of general education. Participants are asked to read this brief article before the event. Participants may also send specific questions or topics for Day to address to Lisa Hunter by Friday, October 26. A light breakfast will be served at 8:15 a.m. Please register so that an accurate head count can be obtained.

Buffalo State is preparing its 10-year self-study as part of the Middle States reaccreditation process. This self-study addresses 14 Standards of Excellence as identified by Middle States. A draft of this self-study has been prepared by 80 faculty and staff members, administrators, and students and is posted at https://bscintra.buffalostate.edu/middlestates. We encourage everyone in the campus community to read this report, look at the evidence supporting it, and provide feedback (other than editing, which has yet to be done) to the Middle States Steering Committee through either public forums, which will be scheduled in November, or through Roz Lindner at lindnera@buffalostate.edu. She will pass along all feedback to others working on the document. 

The final self-study report will provide the basis on which the Middle States review team will make its recommendation regarding Buffalo State’s reaccreditation.

You must use Internet Explorer 9 or Google Chrome to review the self-study and Evidence Room. If you have any difficulties accessing the document, please call the Computing Help Desk at ext. 4357.

You are cordially invited to attend the first meeting of the International Student Advisory Council at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 23, in Cleveland Hall 205.

The leadership of the International Student Advisory Council will express its views on life for internationals on the Buffalo State campus and will also make PowerPoint presentations on Tanzania, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

Everyone is welcome. Refreshments will be served.

The Fine Arts Department and the Art Education Department are proud to join forces with the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy in the Delaware Park Tree Planting on Saturday, October 27, from 9:00 a.m. to noon.

Buffalo State students, under the guidance of Nate Naetzker, lecturer of fine arts, and in cooperation with the Art Education Department, were exploring Frederick Law Olmsted through the lens of the German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys's concept of social sculpture. Buffalo State Art Education students will be working with Buffalo Public Schools students and teachers planting 150 trees in the Great Meadow at Delaware Park. An exhibition of student work will take place in the Atrium Gallery of Rockwell Hall starting November 26. Nancy Spector, associate curator of education at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, will curate the exhibit. A reception will be held on Thursday, November 29, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. in the atrium. All are welcome to attend! This is a Year of the City event.

Buffalo State's Violence Intervention and Victim Advocacy (VIVA) will sponsor the webinar "Trauma Survivors and Law Enforcement: Unintended Consequences and Righting the Ship" on Thursday, October 25, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 120.

Trauma survivors interact with law enforcement in one way or another on a daily basis. The logical question, therefore, is, Are officers prepared to effectively deal with trauma survivors as a subset of their daily encounters with the public? The contention of this training is that they are not. To be clear, this is seen not as a lack of desire to protect and serve, or a lack of wanting to do the right thing. Rather, it is viewed as a lack of knowledge or training as it relates to trauma and its potential affect on those who have experienced it. This session will (1) review some of the basic professional goals that both law enforcement and other community stakeholders have in the performance of their duties; (2) discuss the relationship these stakeholders have to one another as well as the overlapping goals they share and possibilities for collaboration; (3) discuss who it is that goes into law enforcement, as well as why, and how what they bring to the table might affect the way they ultimately do their job; (4) explore how law enforcement is trained to respond to calls for service; (5) analyze how officers are trained to interact with the public and investigate crime(s); (6) look at the power of knowledge, as well as the fact that we know what we know, but we don’t know what we don’t know; and finally (7) discuss ways in which the existing base of knowledge, in the area trauma and effectively dealing with trauma survivors, could be used to augment training.

The presenter will be David R. Thomas, M.S., program administrator for domestic violence education in the Division of Public Safety Leadership at Johns Hopkins University School of Education. He is retired from the Montgomery County (Maryland) Police Department, where he co-founded the Domestic Violence Unit. His responsibilities included investigations and case review as well as departmental curriculum and policy development. Thomas served as chair of the law enforcement committee assisting in drafting the 2012 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization Act. Now at Johns Hopkins, he is an expert in the field of response to and reduction of domestic violence, strangulation, stalking, and sexual assault investigation. Thomas trains at the state, local, national, and international levels and considers combating violence against women his calling in life.

For more information, please contact Liz McGough, ext. 4029.

The Fine Arts Department and Art Education Department joined forces with the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Olmsted Park Conservancy in a Delaware Park Tree Planting that took place on October 27 in the Great Meadow. Under the guidance of Nate Naetzker, lecturer of fine arts, the Art Education students explored Frederick Law Olmsted through the lens of the German conceptual artist Josef Beuys and his concept of social sculpture. 

An exhibition will be installed in the Atrium Gallery of Rockwell Hall on November 26, curated by Nancy Spector, associate curator of education at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. A reception will be held in the atrium on Thursday, November 29, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. All are invited to attend! This is a Year of the City event.

Nicole Martin, a graduate student in the forensic science program at Buffalo State, will present a literature seminar, "Forensic Applications of Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry: A Growing Field," at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, October 18, in Science Building 272. The seminar abstract is as follows:

Isotope analysis is continuously being incorporated into many of the forensic disciplines and is rapidly evolving. Isotopes may serve as a type of chemical "signature" within various materials and can indicate the origin and history of those materials. In the analysis of evidence in a forensic case, this information may be crucial. Examples of types of forensic evidence that may be analyzed using this method may include explosives, hair, soil, bone, and drug samples. Mass spectrometry typically serves as the core method of isotope analysis; however, it is the application of isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) that is currently of interest in the forensic field. The growth of the interest in isotope ratio analysis has prompted a Forensic Isotope Mass Spectrometry (FIRMS) Network to help establish standards and procedures concerning isotope ratio analysis within forensic science. An overview of FIRMS, possible standards and procedures, recent studies, and admissibility in the courts will be discussed.

References

Carter, J. F., Hill, J. C., Doyle, S., Locke, C. (2009). Results of four inter-laboratory comparisons provided by the Forensic Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (FIRMS) Network. J. Science & Justice 49, 127–137.

Ehleringer, J. R., Matheson, S. M. (2010). Stable isotopes and courts. Utah Law Review 2, 385–442.

Gentile, N., Besson, L., Pazos, D., Delémont, O. and Esseiva, P. (2011). IRMS in forensic science: Proposals for a methodological approach. Forensic Sci. Int. 212, 260–271.

NicDaeid, N. and Meier-Augenstein, W. (2008). Letter to the editor: Feasibility of source identification of seized street drug samples by exploiting differences in isotopic composition at natural abundance level by GC/MS as compared to isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). Forensic Sci. Int. 174, 259–261.

This seminar is partially sponsored by the Auxiliary Services Grant Allocation Committee, the Vice President for Student Affairs Office, and the Faculty-Student Association.

The Buffalo State Community Academic Center will host a West Side Roundtable Series for the Year of the City. The first event in the series, Voices of Youth Leadership, will include youth and youth workers from a variety of after-school providers, community centers, and schools discussing existing successful programs and initiatives and needed services. Voices of Youth Leadership will be held on Wednesday, October 24, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the CAC, 214 Grant Street, just south of Lafayette Avenue.

Download the flier and R.S.V.P. to ext. 3289 or cac@buffalostate.edu.

Jacqueline McLeod, associate professor of African American studies at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, will present "The Feminization of Caribbean Emigration: What It Means for Mothering and Masculinity" at 3:00 p.m. Friday, November 16, in Classroom Building B118.

Her talk is free and open to the public. Presented by the History and Social Studies Education Department along with the Faculty-Student Association, the Monroe Fordham Regional History Center, and Phi Alpha Theta.

As part of Buffalo State’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month programs, the Student Social Work Organization, Kappa Omega Social Work Honor Society, and VIVA are sponsoring a presentation on relationship violence by Laura Grube of Haven House and Jorien Brock of the Pride Center of Western New York today from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. in Classroom Building B332.

Relationship violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. It can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats that influence another person. This includes behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone. It happens in all types of relationships—married or dating, among teens and adults. It occurs in lesbian and gay relationships with the same frequency as in straight relationships.

For more information, contact Liz McGough, ext. 4029.