Please join us for an exciting evening with the Slyboots Circus, featuring interactive drumming and juggling workshops, circus arts performances, and a featured performance by the Saakumu Dance Troupe from Ghana, West Africa, on Tuesday, April 11, in the Campbell Student Union Social Hall. This is a free event open to students, alumni, faculty, staff, and affiliates of Buffalo State University.

The Slyboots Circus is the premier performing ensemble at the Slyboots School, which features music and dance from around the world, storytelling, puppetry, and circus arts to captivate and excite audiences. The Slyboots School is an internationally touring enterprise, created in Buffalo, New York, dedicated to promoting positive social change through cultural arts education and performance. Its mission is to educate, entertain, and inspire: to bring the world together, on the sly.

Watch a YouTube video about Slyboots Circus.

The award-winning Saakumu Dance Troupe is one of the leading traditional-contemporary dance and music groups in Ghana, West Africa. Created by master musician Bernard Woma, the group is noted for its eclectic repertoire that includes a range of spiritual, ceremonial, and recreational genres as well as contemporary African dance forms. Its music and dance are joyful, expressive, and highly participatory.

Schedule
3:30 p.m. Drumming and Juggling Workshop
5:30 p.m. Featured Performance by Saakumu Dance Troupe
6:30 p.m. Interactive Drum Circle and Circus Arts

Please consider offering students extra credit for attending this event. Students should use the Bengal Connect event page to RSVP and document their attendance for extra credit.

RSVP for the event.

This event was organized by the School of the Professions and the Equity and Campus Diversity Office and made possible with support from the Buffalo State University Grant Allocation Committee and the Equity and Campus Diversity Office.

Please contact Amanda Marzolf, executive assistant to the dean of the School of the Professions, with questions.

The Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) Office is accepting public comments on the draft Storm Water Management Program Annual Report. The report documents storm water pollution prevention measures undertaken by Buffalo State University during the reporting year ending March 9, 2023. Measures implementation and the draft report are requirements of the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) General Permit, No. GP-0-15-003, issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The draft annual report, instructions for submitting comments, and additional information on campus storm water pollution prevention efforts can be found on the EH&S Office MS4 storm water pollution prevention web page.  Paper copies of the draft annual report and the Storm Water Management Program Plan for the campus are also available for viewing during normal business hours (7:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m. weekdays) in the Facilities Operations and Key Center, located in the Clinton Center.

Now that you are using Brightspace for your course, are there things that you need to clean up?

• Has your content been moved into Brightspace but you need to reorganize it?
• Are there extra files in your course you don't need anymore?
• Is your Gradebook “out of control” with extra grade items and columns you don't need?
• Do you have video files you need to move to the media server?

In this in-person, hands-on workshop, we will go over these questions and have time during the session to assist you with moving and organizing your content to clean up your course.

This workshop is suitable for instructors currently teaching in Brightspace in any modality—face-to-face, hybrid, or online—but is not intended to replace the Brightspace Fundamentals Workshop series.

Workshops will be held in Butler Library 314. Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

• Friday, March 24 - Noon–1:00 p.m.
• Monday, March 27 - Noon–1:00 p.m.
• Wednesday, March 29 - 11:00 a.m.–Noon

Immediately following these workshops will be one-hour open labs, where you are welcome to stay to continue working on your spring cleaning in Brightspace.

The Fashion and Textile Technology Department is pleased to announce an upcoming event featuring speaker Kimberly Jenkins on Thursday, April 13, at 6:00 p.m. in the LoRusso Alumni and Visitor Center. The event is designed to address the fashion industry's inclusion and social and racial justice concerns, particularly in response to the discerning perspectives of the new generation of students, Gen Z.

Reports suggest that Gen Z students are seeking to recognize previously overlooked creatives, including designers of color and those from non-Western countries. As such, Ms. Jenkins's professional and academic work on decolonizing the fashion curriculum and her course on fashion and race at Parsons in NYC have become a source of inspiration for students seeking to challenge the power structures that have favored dominant groups at the expense of ethnic minority communities.

During this event, Ms. Jenkins will share her expertise on these important topics, drawing from her innovative work on the Fashion and Race Database. The event will provide an opportunity for attendees to engage with her and learn more about her groundbreaking efforts in the fashion industry.

The event will include food and beverage service, and all members of the university community are welcome to attend. Please mark your calendars and join us for this insightful and engaging event.

The NYS-Ride commuter benefit has been enhanced to allow employees to enjoy pre-tax savings on qualified parking expenses. The pre-tax parking benefit can be used to pay a third-party parking vendor at eligible locations but cannot be used for parking provided by the employer. Employees who pay for parking as part of their daily commute to work, including parking at or near a public transportation hub, may use pre-tax payroll deductions.

Employees may contribute up to $300 a month on a pre-tax basis to pay for parking expenses. Contributions are deducted biweekly from an employee’s gross pay and deposited into the appropriate account. Employees can use the debit card that is issued to NYS-Ride participants to pay for qualified parking expenses or submit receipts for reimbursement. Transit and parking funds are considered two separate accounts and will not be comingled.

The parking benefit will be available beginning in the June 2023 benefit month. The deadline to enroll for the June benefit month is Saturday, April 1. Payroll deductions will begin Wednesday, April 26.

For more information, eligibility, qualified expenses, and to enroll, please visit the NYS-Ride website.

There is a link on the Registrar’s Office website to help students and faculty members find online courses. It is an online listing of online-only sections (sections being offered 100% online) for summer and fall 2023. This listing is updated each weekday evening. Although these sections are also contained in the regular fall master schedule, the online-only listing will help you quickly identify 100 percent online sections. You can find online listings using these links:

Summer 2023
Session ES
Session LS
Session VS

Fall 2023
UG
GR

Students can easily search directly in Banner or use the Search for Classes link. There are currently 129 active online sections (undergraduate and graduate) being offered for fall 2023.

The spring 2023 Critique and Evaluation Period (CEP) exam schedules are posted on the Registrar's Office website.

Spring 2023 CEP Schedule (PDF, 93 KB)

Spring 2023 CEP Schedule with Block Exams (PDF, 120 KB)

In Banner self-service, students can now do the following:

• View their registration start date or time ticket under "Registration Status." For continuing undergraduate freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, the registration start date is based on earned credit hours only. Do not count "in progress" credit hours being taken for spring 2023. Registration begins at 6:00 a.m. on the assigned date and is then continuous. Registration start dates will be April 5–17 inclusive.
• View holds, if any. Holds should be resolved at least two working days before a student intends to register. Additional hold information (PDF, 90 KB) is available on the Registrar's Office website.
• Search for summer and fall 2023 courses. Students can see course listings by searching directly in Banner under Look Up Classes.

Both the summer and fall 2023 master schedules are also available online on the Registrar's Office website under Courses. Hover over the advising codes on the online listing to see a window with the code definitions for that section.

Continuing students registered for spring 2023 are expected to register for fall 2023 during the registration start dates April 5–17 or within two weeks thereafter. Students should be encouraged to register early to secure their desired schedule.

Students are strongly encouraged to meet with an adviser in their major to review what courses they should take to stay on track for graduation. Department contact information can be found online. All undergraduates are encouraged to register for at least 15 credit hours each semester to enable them to graduate in four years.

Composition courses "College Writing I" and "College Writing II" are listed as CWP101 and CWP102 respectively. To find them in Banner, go to "Look Up Classes," and under "Subject," select "College Writing Program." In the online listing of courses, go to the undergraduate department listing "English" and scroll down to the CWP listings.

Please encourage students to use Schedule Planner. It’s an easy to use online tool that makes schedule planning and registration easier!

Review the Registrar's Office web page Registration Toolkit for additional information.

Summer and fall 2023 registration begins Wednesday, April 5. When working with students, please communicate that now is the time for them to check their Banner accounts for any holds. They should attempt to resolve all holds at least two weeks before registration to ensure that they can register on their assigned registration date. (PDF, 102 KB). Detailed information on holds (PDF, 90 KB) can be found on the Registrar's Office website.

When working with students, please remind them that if they are declaring or changing their major, it is best to submit their approved form to the Registrar's Office at least 10 days before they intend to register. Because of added volume at this time of year, please allow up to 10 days for a major change to be processed.

Forms are available online (PDF, 1.1 MB) or in academic departments.

Summer and fall 2023 registration begins Wednesday, April 5.