Buffalo State Dining has launched a new mobile payment device in its venues called LevelUp. LevelUp is a free app that enables you to pay with your smartphone at Buffalo State Dining's venues as well as thousands of businesses nationwide. Simply download the LevelUp app to your smartphone, link a credit or debit card to your account, and pay with your phone at any Buffalo State Dining venue. LevelUp is available for iPhones and Android-based phones. Try it today!

For more information on level up, visit www.thelevelup.com.

Blackboard Collaborate is a live web-conferencing application that allows exciting new approaches to support a twenty-first-century teaching and learning environment. Learn how Collaborate allows you to import PowerPoint slides and share your computer screen or a particular window with participants while interacting with students through chat, webcam, and microphone. Join us on Tuesday, March 19, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 104.

Register at http://bscintra.buffalostate.edu/registration/classdetails.asp?class=3076.

3-D worlds are potentially important tools that are likely to gain widespread adoption as colleges become populated with "digital native" students. Explore a 3-D virtual teaching environment called Qube in this hands-on session on Thursday, March 14, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in E. H. Butler Library 318. Learn about graduate creativity courses taught through this innovative technology. Discuss the pedagogical implications of Qube’s features. Presented by John Cabra, associate professor, and Cynthia Burnett, assistant professor, Center for Studies in Creativity.

Register at http://bscintra.buffalostate.edu/registration/classdetails.asp?class=3102.

Join us for a unique discussion on the needs of veteran students and gain strategies to enhance their learning experiences on Wednesday, March 13, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. in the Professional Development Center, E. H. Butler Library 181B. This session will begin with a 20-minute video on designing course activities to enhance veterans’ success and will be followed by a panel discussion with faculty members who have had experience teaching veterans at Buffalo State. This presentation will be facilitated by Sue McMillen.

Register at http://bscintra.buffalostate.edu/registration/classdetails.asp?class=3092.

Learn to employ the principles used in video games to your teaching. Get game-based learning strategies and best practices that will motivate and engage your students without technical distractions. Participants will watch examples of gamification methods in action while focusing on the philosophy behind game-based learning. You will learn how to

• identify the five principles of gamification;
• develop strategies to translate these concepts into action in a face-to-face class, a learning management system (LMS), or an online class;
• adjust curricular designs to take full advantage of gamification elements;
• wrap the gamification elements around a central location such as an LMS;
• locate resources to assist you.

Join your colleagues on Tuesday, March 12, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. in the Professional Development Center, E. H. Butler Library 181B. There was no opportunity to preview this webinar.

Register at http://bscintra.buffalostate.edu/registration/classdetails.asp?class=3125.

Buffalo State Dining is proud to support Manny Lezama, senior director of dining services, who will compete in the 13th annual Sassafraz Ice Carving Competition on Saturday, February 23, in Yorkville, Toronto. Lezama will compete against 11 master carvers, showcasing his talents in front of hundreds of spectators for the chance to win one of three trophies awarded to the top ice carvers in the competition.

Lezama has been a member of the National Ice Carving Association since 2001 and has had the pleasure of carving ice for more than 18 years. He has participated in numerous competitions across the United States and Canada and has been featured in many magazines, on local television, and in other media events for his work.

Good luck to Buffalo State Dining's culinary team: Manny Lezama, Austin Craig, and Ian Woodward.

Kevin Williams, associate professor of earth sciences and science education, will present "Detecting Subsurface Ice in the Canadian Arctic" today, February 22, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. in Ketchum Hall 320. His talk is part of the Conversations in and out of the Disciplines Series. Discussion, wine, and cheese follow. We urge all interested faculty and staff members, graduate students, and undergraduates to attend.

The college community is invited to attend a meeting of representatives of the Niagara Frontier Sister City Organizations, who will make presentations on their respective programs, activities, and future projects, on Tuesday, February 26, at 7:30 p.m. in E. H. Butler Library 210. This meeting is sponsored by the Buffalo-Lille Association Inc.

For further information, please contact Jean F. Gounard, director of international student affairs at Buffalo State and president of the Buffalo-Lille Association, ext. 5331.

Joëlle Leclaire, associate professor of economics and finance, will share her research as part of the Year of the City Emerging Scholar series on Thursday, February 28, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center South. This series of presentations provides faculty members with an opportunity to share their intellectual work with the rest of the campus.

Leclaire’s talk looks at the structure of household debt relative to the debt held by government, business, and the rest of the world. She explains that household debt cannot continue to support economic growth. Business must start spending again for new growth to be sustainable. "From the late nineties through 2008, most increases in household debt took the form of mortgages used to purchase homes, improve existing properties, and consolidate other types of debt. As the regular mortgage market became saturated, lenders extended a variety of tricky mortgages to households previously denied mortgages, low-income households in particular. This extension of credit to low-income households led to some renewal of many urban centers. With the financial crisis, however, these same urban centers were decimated when those households were faced with changes in both the terms of credit and their ability to pay. Now, many of these same households are denied mortgages but are presented with expensive credit card and other debt, which they are using to cover basic living expenses in the absence of steady employment. The health of a city depends crucially on the level of employment, which sustains the ability to pay mortgages and other debt. Thus, clearing existing household debt through job creation is potentially the most powerful way to sustainably renew a city."

Teacher-turned-Silicon Valley marketing guru Bill Cleary, ’69, ’73, returns to Buffalo State on Tuesday, March 5, at 7:00 p.m. to present "How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed Marketing." The presentation, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Burchfield Penney Art Center's Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium. A question-and-answer period will follow the talk.

As consumer marketing manager at Apple Computer in the 1980s, Cleary reported to Steve Jobs and helped launch the company's groundbreaking Apple //e and //c products. Later, he cofounded CKS Group, an advertising agency that was instrumental in launching several major web brands including Amazon.com, Ebay, and Yahoo.

Cleary will offer an insider's view of the last 30-plus years of Apple's exciting and innovative marketing programs and how Steve Jobs personally transformed the motion picture industry (Pixar), music industry (iTunes and iPod), smartphones (iPhone), retail (Apple store), and computers (radical ease-of-use).

This Year of the City presentation is sponsored by Buffalo State's Institutional Advancement Office, Small Business Development Center, Business Department, Business Department Marketing Club, Communication Department, and Anthropology Department