All faculty members are encouraged to attend training for Brightspace, the new SUNY-wide learning management system.

In-Person Training Options
In-person training sessions will be offered by Instructional Design and Distance Learning (IDDL) and the Teaching and Learning Center.

These sessions will be hosted in a variety of labs across campus. Registration is through the Workshop Registration System.

The Brightspace Fundamentals Workshop Series is designed for instructors new to Brightspace and is suitable for instructors teaching in any modality: face-to-face, hybrid, or online.

Workshops in the series:

• Navigation and Interface
• Communication Tools
• Authoring and Publishing Content
• Gradable Activities: Assignments
• Gradable Activities: Discussions
• Gradable Activities: Quizzes
• Gradebook

Brightspace LMS Open Lab - Need assistance with your course in Brightspace?
This lab is an open forum devoted to answering questions and solving problems that faculty members may have about navigating Brightspace. Bring your course-specific questions and have them answered here! Labs are designed for faculty members that attended campus workshops or SUNY trainings, or have been using Brightspace for their courses in any modality: face-to-face, hybrid, or online.

Have other questions or need assistance? 

• The Buffalo State IT Knowledge Base has many articles to assist with Brightspace. Use the search bar at the top to find information on other topics. 
• Please direct any questions about Brightspace functionality to SUNY Online. 
• If you need on-campus assistance from Instructional Design and Distance Learning, please submit a ticket through the IT portal. 

The Student Progress Survey will be deployed via the Bengal Success Portal twice during the semester. The first survey will be deployed during the first three weeks of the semester, starting Sunday, February 19, and closing Thursday, March 9, at 11:00 p.m. The second survey will be deployed before midterms and ahead of the course withdrawal deadline, starting Monday, March 27, and closing Monday, April 3, at 11:00 p.m. Each survey will be accompanied by specific kudos, flags, and referrals that are relevant at that particular point in the semester. 

Raising kudos, flags, and referrals is the first step in alerting other campus members of the status of students, enabling professional staff members to follow up with students and close the loop of communication with faculty members; however, before raising any flag, please make every attempt to communicate and resolve an issue with a student. If your attempt is unsuccessful, please proceed with raising flags in the Bengal Success Portal so the appropriate staff member can provide support.

It is expected that all faculty members (full time and adjunct) will raise kudos, flags, or referrals for each course survey, acknowledging where students stand in their respective courses so that support staff can proactively reach out and respond to student needs and concerns. If no kudos, flags, or referrals are raised for your course(s), please simply open your course survey and click the submit button to mark your course survey(s) complete.

A video on how to complete the Student Progress Survey for courses is available online. Please email Bob Hudson, coordinator of advisement student systems and senior academic adviser, with questions about completing course surveys or raising kudos, flags, and referrals.

Thank you all for caring about the success of our students. It is essential that we continue to work collaboratively as a campus community, making every effort to increase students’ academic achievement, persistence, retention, and graduation rates.

Please join the Biology Department and the Great Lakes Center for the seminar “Exploring Careers in Environmental Education: Professional Pathways at New York State Parks,” led by New York State Park naturalists Lara Hargrave (Niagara Region) and Matt Nusstein, ’14 (Genesee Region), today, February 13, at 3:00 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 216. Attendees are welcome to arrive at 2:30 p.m. to enjoy coffee and cookies leading up to the seminar.

Ms. Hargrave is an environmental educator with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation and a graduate student in the Great Lakes Environmental Science graduate program (M.A.) at Buffalo State. She finds fulfillment in many programs, especially those centered on phenological and climate-change community science projects. Her dream is to live a life of continual learning, dedicated to improving our collective understanding of the environment.

Mr. Nusstein, a Western New York native, has been an environmental educator with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation for over nine years, first working out of the Niagara Region, primarily covering Evangola, Woodlawn Beach, and Knox Farm state parks. Some of his favorite programs to lead are community-science based, as they are a terrific way to blend real-life science with education, empowering park patrons to take an active role in park stewardship and learning.

Are you an inquisitive individual with a desire to improve our collective understanding of nature? Have you ever wished to work…in the woods? Do you dream of learning, growing, and helping others do the same? If you answered affirmatively to any of these questions, a career in environmental education may be a fantastic fit for you! Discover what this rewarding job entails through this lively discussion. Together, we will explore what environmental education is, what the presenters’ day-to-day duties as educators are, and how interested parties may pursue a career in environmental education or with the New York State Parks. All are welcome and encouraged to ask questions.

The FACT² Inclusive Teaching Task Group is interested in learning more about faculty engagement and experience with inclusive teaching and learning practices.

FACT² is looking for faculty members who are using inclusive teaching strategies and are willing to share their successes (and challenges) with others across SUNY. The task group is creating an online repository of these examples and highlighting a few in the FACT² Inclusive Teaching Webinar Series in April.

Examples of inclusive teaching strategies include the following:

• Inclusive Syllabus - Examples of faculty members on campus using the syllabus to set the tone for diversity and inclusion to create a welcoming environment for students.
• Teaching the Controversy - Examples of faculty members on campus integrating diversity-related controversy in the field or discipline as part of the course content or learning activities.
• Social Justice Assessment - Examples of faculty members on campus that are using social justice platforms for assessment techniques to determine student learning in the course.

Please complete the Inclusive Teaching Survey to share any innovative ways in which you are incorporating and assessing inclusive teaching practices into students’ learning. If you have an interest in being considered as part of the FACT² Spring Inclusive Teaching Webinar Series, please respond to the survey by Friday, March 3.

Thank you for your time.

Carlos R. A. Jones (Buffalo State), Co-chair
Audi Matías (SUNY Empire), Co-chair
FACT² Inclusive Teaching Task Group

Would you like to have SUNY move your courses from Blackboard to Brightspace? Faculty members can request migration of one section of each course they have taught using Blackboard Learn. For example, if you teach the same course in different semesters, please select one section to be migrated.

Please use the Course Migration into Brightspace Request Form to have SUNY migrate your course. You must complete one form for each course migration request.

Faculty members will have access to Blackboard through Monday, April 10.

Have other questions or need assistance?

• The Buffalo State IT Knowledge Base has many articles to assist with Brightspace. Use the search bar at the top to find information on other topics.
• Please direct any questions about Brightspace functionality to SUNY Online.
• If you need on-campus assistance from Instructional Design and Distance Learning, please submit a ticket through the IT portal.
• Check for upcoming Brightspace workshops on campus in the Workshop Registration System.

StudyQuad will be open every day from 7:00 a.m. until 2:00 a.m. starting Sunday, February 12. This change in hours is being made after careful analysis of the limited number of people using the space during the late night hours of 2:00–7:00 a.m. StudyQuad will be open for extended hours past 2:00 a.m. for the last week of classes and exam week. A complete schedule of library hours is available online.

Remember, Butler Library’s online resources are available 24/7 at https://library.buffalostate.edu/.

Please contact Charles Lyons, library director, with any feedback.

Please join the Biology Department and the Great Lakes Center for the seminar “Exploring Careers in Environmental Education: Professional Pathways at New York State Parks,” led by New York State Park naturalists Lara Hargrave (Niagara Region) and Matt Nusstein, ’14 (Genesee Region), on Monday, February 13, at 3:00 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 216. Attendees are welcome to arrive at 2:30 p.m. to enjoy coffee and cookies leading up to the seminar.

Ms. Hargrave is an environmental educator with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation and a graduate student in the Great Lakes Environmental Science graduate program (M.A.) at Buffalo State. She finds fulfillment in many programs, especially those centered on phenological and climate-change community science projects. Her dream is to live a life of continual learning, dedicated to improving our collective understanding of the environment.

Mr. Nusstein, a Western New York native, has been an environmental educator with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation for over nine years, first working out of the Niagara Region, primarily covering Evangola, Woodlawn Beach, and Knox Farm state parks. Some of his favorite programs to lead are community-science based, as they are a terrific way to blend real-life science with education, empowering park patrons to take an active role in park stewardship and learning.

Are you an inquisitive individual with a desire to improve our collective understanding of nature? Have you ever wished to work…in the woods? Do you dream of learning, growing, and helping others do the same? If you answered affirmatively to any of these questions, a career in environmental education may be a fantastic fit for you! Discover what this rewarding job entails through this lively discussion. Together, we will explore what environmental education is, what the presenters’ day-to-day duties as educators are, and how interested parties may pursue a career in environmental education or with the New York State Parks. All are welcome and encouraged to ask questions.

The Buffalo State Political Science and Public Administration Department’s 3+3 combined pathway in political science and law is pleased to announce the following LSAT prep workshops and practice test events to help students prepare for the Law School Admission Test. Come and learn what skills you will need to succeed in getting the best LSAT score possible. In-person LSAT Prep events will take place on the University at Buffalo’s North Campus. Virtual sessions are also available.

• LSAT Prep Workshops will be held Saturday, March 4 and April 22.
• An LSAT Practice Test, including a three-hour review and Q&A session with Buffalo State alumna Erin Decker, ’16 (who scored a perfect 180 on the LSAT), will be held Saturday, April 1.

Space for the LSAT workshops is limited. Register today.

More information about the 3+3 combined pathway is available on the Political Science and Public Administration website.

The Buffalo State Writing Center continues to offer a number of initiatives to support the faculty this semester. Faculty members in all disciplines are invited to take advantage of the following:

Commercials: If you wish to encourage your students to visit the Writing Center, consider scheduling a live “commercial”—a 10-minute in-class presentation by a tutor who will review the services offered by the center, show students how to make an appointment, and discuss the benefits of one-on-one writing support.

Made-to-Order Workshops: Is there a writing issue your students tend to struggle with or a concept you want to reinforce? We are happy to design and deliver a 30-to-40-minute in-class workshop on a writing-related topic (for example, citation styles, thesis statements, effective peer review, etc). Please request a workshop at least two weeks in advance.

Individual Consultations: Maggie Herb, director of the Writing Center and assistant professor of English, offers individual consultations with faculty members on both pedagogical concerns (writing assignment design and implementation, for example) and professional or academic writing projects.

To schedule a commercial, a workshop, or an individual consultation, please contact Dr. Herb.

A reception for the Spring 2023 Art and Design Faculty Exhibition will take place tonight, February 9, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Upton Hall foyer. Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome! 

The faculty exhibition will be on view in the Czurles-Nelson Gallery through Wednesday, March 1.

Czurles-Nelson Gallery Spring 2023 Hours
Monday
9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Tuesday
8:30–11:00 a.m.
12:30–5:00 p.m.

Wednesday
9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Thursday
8:30–11:00 a.m.
12:30–5:00 p.m.

Friday
10:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Please contact Marie Bogner, Czurles-Nelson Gallery coordinator, (716) 878-4390, with questions.