The New York State Office of Employee Relations has announced that the agreements regarding carryover of vacation accruals, which commenced in 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, expire on December 31, 2023.

For employees represented by CSEA and PEF: Vacation accruals earned before April 1, 2023, are reduced to 40 days as of December 31, 2023; however, any vacation earned on or after April 1, 2023, can be carried until April 1, 2024, at which point any vacation accruals over the contractual cap will be reduced to 40 days.

For M/C employees and employees represented by UUP: You must be at your normal vacation accumulation cap as of January 1, 2024. No accruals in excess of 40 days will be carried past December 31, 2023.

For employees represented by PBA of NYS and NYSCOPBA: Vacation accruals earned before September 30, 2023, are reduced to 40 days as of December 31, 2023. Any vacation earned on or after October 1, 2023, can be carried until September 30, 2024.

Please contact the Payroll Office at (716) 878-4124 with questions.

The New York State Office of Employee Relations has announced that the agreements regarding carryover of vacation accruals, which commenced in 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, expire on December 31, 2023.

For employees represented by CSEA and PEF: Vacation accruals earned before April 1, 2023, are reduced to 40 days as of December 31, 2023; however, any vacation earned on or after April 1, 2023, can be carried until April 1, 2024, at which point any vacation accruals over the contractual cap will be reduced to 40 days.

For M/C employees and employees represented by UUP: You must be at your normal vacation accumulation cap as of January 1, 2024. No accruals in excess of 40 days will be carried past December 31, 2023.

For employees represented by PBA of NYS and NYSCOPBA: Vacation accruals earned before September 30, 2023, are reduced to 40 days as of December 31, 2023. Any vacation earned on or after October 1, 2023, can be carried until September 30, 2024.

Please contact the Payroll Office at (716) 878-4124 with questions.

“As a long-tenured Buffalo State employee, I have been contributing in a small way to the SEFA Campaign for decades, but I feel it makes a big impact. I remember thinking it was fun to peruse the SEFA booklet (PDF, 10 MB) of participating agencies and decide where my dollars would go. I really appreciate being able to designate my contribution to local entities who make a difference in my community. The past few years, I have been designating to the lifesaving mission of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Western New York. It feels great to know that my contributions help ensure that families in our own community never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing, or food. Everywhere we go, we engage with colleagues, friends, our students, and family members who benefit from the services of SEFA agencies. I hope you will join me in taking just a few minutes to click through the options and doing your part to make a difference.”
—Lisa Krieger

We warmly invite you to share your reasons for giving, and we'll feature them in the Daily. Please send your thoughts to campaign co-chairs Wendy Paterson, dean of the School of Education, or Maria C. Garrity, senior systems programmer in Information Technology. Let's maintain our momentum, as together, we can achieve this! To donate, please go to the e-pledge system and click "Forgot user ID or password" to begin the process, even if you are rolling over your pledge from last year. This instructional video and documentation can further guide you.

Thank you.

“I contribute because I believe it’s the right action for the betterment of our community and to support those in need. The SEFA booklet (PDF, 10 MB) offers several federated charities to choose from, and utilizing payroll deduction eases the impact on your pay. Witnessing the efforts of the campus in this campaign, I can attest that our students and community genuinely benefits from the generosity and commitment demonstrated year after year.”
—Andrew Garrity

We warmly invite you to share your reasons for giving, and we’ll feature them in the Daily. Please send your thoughts to campaign co-chairs Wendy Paterson, dean of the School of Education, or Maria C. Garrity, senior systems programmer in Information Technology. Let’s maintain our momentum, as together, we can achieve this! To donate, please go to the e-pledge system and click “Forgot user ID or password” to begin the process, even if you are rolling over your pledge from last year. This instructional video and documentation can further guide you.

Thank you.

The Barnes & Noble at Buffalo State Bookstore hours for the week of Thanksgiving 2023 will be as follows:

Monday, November 20, and Tuesday, November 21: 8:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, November 22–24: Closed

The café will be closed the entire week of Thanksgiving.

Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving!

You are invited to celebrate Rita Zientek's outstanding tenure at Buffalo State University during a retirement reception in her honor on Friday, December 1, at 4:00 p.m. in the LoRusso Alumni and Visitor Center. Please note the change of location. Dr. Zientek was an important part in the creation of the School of the Professions, where she has served as the associate dean. Please join us for this tribute and celebration.

UBMD Orthopaedics will partner with Buffalo State Athletics to offer a free hands-only CPR training tonight, November 17, in the Buffalo State Sports Arena Hall of Fame lobby from 4:30 to 8:00 p.m. Come and learn the life-saving techniques and stay to enjoy some Bengals Athletics action. Women’s hockey hosts Morrisville at 4:00 p.m., women’s basketball plays SUNY Poly at 5:00 p.m., and men’s basketball will take on Utica at 7:00 p.m. The CPR training takes just 10 minutes, and all participants will be entered into a drawing for the chance to win pairs of Bills’ tickets and Tops gift cards.

The Buffalo State Orange Crushers Team members are asking you to help them reach their fundraising goal as they take the Polar Plunge for Special Olympics New York. Your donations mean more now than ever before.

Your support will directly affect the ability for Special Olympic New York athletes to participate in trainings, activities, and competitions at no cost to them or their caregivers.

With your donation, you can help the athletes get safely back in the game!

2023 Buffalo Polar Plunge: Buffalo State Orange Crushers - Special Olympics New York

Students have until Monday, November 20, to apply to join the Anne Frank Project's 2024 delegation to Rwanda.

Through our unique study-abroad program in Rwanda, we teach students to facilitate story-based learning, enable them to participate in authentic cultural expeditions, and immerse them personally in Rwanda’s reconciliation process following the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Students will experience Rwanda's culture as we visit schools, villages, genocide memorials, government offices, national parks, and cultural centers.

Encourage interested students to get their applications in by Monday!

Please visit the AFP website for more information or email Drew Kahn, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor and founding director of the Anne Frank Project.

Please join us for "AI Across Academia, Industry, Government, and Society," an informal panel discussion, on Monday, November 20, from 4:20 to 6:05 p.m. in Science and Mathematics Complex 151. The presentation is part of the Data Science and Analytics Seminar Series.

Joaquin Carbonara
Panel organizer and Moderator

Eric Walker
Panel Co-organizer, Director of Energy Development and Management, Erie County

Mr. Walker develops and administers an energy conservation program for county government, coordinates energy policy with relevant federal and state agencies, and develops strategic initiatives to demonstrate the county's sustainability leadership. 

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H. David "Dave" Sheets
Director of Graduate Program in Data Analytics, Canisius University 

Generative AI - What tasks does it do well?
How does GPT actually work?
Is GPT strong AI or weak AI? 

Mass extinction events, the behavior of migratory songbirds, and forensic bite-mark comparisons don’t have any immediately obvious connections, at least until you start to apply computational and statistical reasoning to broaden the understanding of these physical and biological events. Dr. Sheets has collaborated with other scientists in these areas, as well as others including entomology, anthropology, geology, and pattern evidence within forensics, resulting in over 80 publications in the peer-reviewed literature. These experiences in interdisciplinary research have incorporated using a wide range of statistical and computational methods to extract information and make predictions based on large data sets. His graduate work was in physics, a mixture of experimental work and computational modeling.

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Dave Molik 
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS)

Dr. Molik is a computational biologist specializing in arthropod genomics and is currently working with the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. His experience includes a previous role within the same department at the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center, Tropical Crop, and Commodity Protection Research Unit (USDA ARS PBARC TCCPRU), where he focused on developing heterochromatin computational software. This software is crucial for creating more precise and practical genomic tools for research in combating agricultural insect pests. Before his tenure at the USDA ARS, he dedicated his efforts to his thesis at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to that, he was a Scientific Informatics Developer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. 

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Alejandro Carbonara
Software Engineer, Google (NYC)

Mr. Carbonara studied undergraduate at CalTech and got a master's degree in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He currently works as a software engineer at Google. 

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Joshua Kovacich  
Director of Information Technology, Buffalo Public Schools

Mr. Kovacich currently serves as director of information technology for the Buffalo Public Schools, where he plays a pivotal role in shaping and implementing technology strategies. Over the past two decades, he has witnessed the profound influence of educational technology on contemporary teaching and learning methods and has come to see generative AI not just as a shiny new tool, but as the next evolutionary stride in the ongoing advancement of education. 

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Amin Serehali
Senior Vice President - Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Independent Health 

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With the special support and assistance of

Mounika Goruganthu
Graduate Student, Data Science and Analytics
Graduate Assistant, Mathematics and DSA
SUNY Buffalo State University  

and

Eric Barton
Assistant, DSA program
CIS student
SUNY Buffalo State University