The Maurene Callahan Bouras Center for Global Engagement invites students, faculty, and staff members to celebrate 2022 International Education Week November 14–18. Today's events are listed below. Events will also be posted on the International Student and Scholar Services website. Please contact Tricia Herritt, ISSS director, with questions.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14

Study Abroad with Buffalo State
12:15–12:45 p.m.
Students interested in global internships or semester-long or short-term opportunities are encouraged to attend this Maurene Callahan Bouras Center for Global Engagement Office webinar to learn more about studying abroad.

You Can't Dance Like That: Successfully Navigating Authentic Cross-Cultural Friendships
3:00 p.m.
South Wing - 7th Floor Conference Room
Presenters Yanick Jenkins, director of Buffalo State's Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), and Carole Miller Canestrari, senior EOP counselor, friends from different racial and cultural backgrounds, share the story of their relationship, including conflict resolution experiences and tips for maintaining and cultivating authentic communication and navigating difficult conversations. Participants will understand individual and personal roles and responsibility—the importance of communicating, seeing one another, and a willingness to have difficult conversations. Through storytelling and sharing, participants will be guided to review and reflect on their own lives and experiences.

The Maurene Callahan Bouras Center for Global Engagement invites students, faculty, and staff members to celebrate 2022 International Education Week November 14–18. Check the Daily Bulletin next week for featured events. Events will also be posted on the International Student and Scholar Services website. Please contact Tricia Herritt, ISSS director, with questions.

In preparation for the campus migration from Blackboard Learn to D2L Brightspace, courses that were taught with or supplemented by Blackboard Learn can be migrated to D2L Brightspace.

There are two options for migrating your Blackboard Learn course content to Brightspace.

You can manually export courses from Blackboard Learn and import them to Brightspace, or you can request that courses be migrated by SUNY. Faculty members should inspect all migrated courses to ensure that all content has migrated accurately and is functioning as expected.

Manual Export
Faculty members who wish to manually export their Blackboard courses and import them to Brightspace can do so by requesting a Brightspace development shell. This option will be beneficial to those who are working on a course redesign and would like to benefit from the new Brightspace course design format. Once the development shell is created, faculty members can import their Blackboard Learn course to D2L Brightspace. 

Migration Requests 
To request that a course be migrated through SUNY, please complete the Brightspace Course Migration Request Form. 

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. You must complete one form for each course migration request. These requests will be monitored, as the campus will incur a cost for each course migrated from Blackboard to Brightspace.  

Faculty members who wish to have their development shell or course migrated before November 30 are asked to please complete requests by Tuesday, November 15. These requests will be processed and sent to SUNY. Hereafter, requests will be sent to SUNY on a recurring basis until the middle of the spring 2023 semester.  

If you have further questions about the Brightspace project, please submit a ticket to the Buffalo State IT portal. If you have questions about the functionality of Brightspace, please contact SUNY Online.

The Buffalo State Orange Crushers Team is asking you to help us reach our fundraising goal as we take the plunge for Special Olympics New York at the Buffalo Polar Plunge on Saturday, December 3. Your donations mean more now than ever before.

Your support will directly affect the ability of Special Olympics NY athletes to participate in trainings, activities, and competitions at no cost to them or their caregivers.

Registration takes place from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.; the plunge is at 2:00 p.m.

Co-sponsored by Buffalo State, USG Best Buddies, and the Student Council for Exceptional Children.

Please join the Chemistry Department for the seminar "Enhancing Methods of Rapid Trace Opioid Detection Using SERS and OPI-MS," presented by George Pollinger, master's degree candidate in the Chemistry Department at SUNY Buffalo State, on Thursday, November 10, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Science and Mathematics Complex 151. 

Abstract
The opioid crisis has grown exponentially within recent years, accounting for over 80,000 U.S. deaths in 2021 alone. Both natural and synthetic opioids are highly addictive, raising concern over the number of users and abusers supplied with these drugs. To combat opioid abuse in the United States, it is crucial to eliminate the drugs at the source by seizing packages containing illicit opioids before they import into the U.S. for distribution. While trace opioid detection is typically laborious and time consuming, methods that are both simple and rapid are needed to recognize illicit opioids within packages before they can be imported into the U.S. This presentation includes two analytical procedures that detect trace amounts of opioids on site at international mail facilities (IMFs) and express courier hubs (ECHs). The first paper has demonstrated the use of micro-liquid extractions and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) handheld devices to detect trace opioids in suspect pharmaceutical tablets. The second uses open port interface–mass spectrometry (OPI-MS) to detect trace opioids on mail and packages. The talk will conclude with an overview of the benefits these methods offer, as well as suggest future research to broaden the applications of their use as a forensic tool.

The SUNY Model European Union Club will hold a general interest meeting regarding the founding of a new student organization dedicated to studying the policies, processes, and current events of the European Union on Thursday, November 17, at 12:15 p.m. in the basement lounge of Cassety Hall. This meeting is open to all majors. Food and drink will be provided.

For more information, please contact Cassandra Brown, undergraduate SUNYMEU student director.

The U.S.-Kazakhstan University Partnerships Program will issue five awards this year (up to $24,000 each) to build capacity for substantive international engagement between higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United States and Kazakhstan. Funded by the U.S. Mission to Kazakhstan and administered by American Councils for International Education, the 2022–2024 program is designed to establish new and help deepen existing partnerships between Kazakhstani and U.S. HEIs.

The goal of the grants program is to increase institutional, teaching, and research capacities at Kazakhstan and U.S. HEIs to jointly address global challenges in agriculture, renewable energy, IT, and other STEM fields. Selected grants will meet one of three key objectives of the program to accomplish the following:

• Increase research collaboration in agriculture, renewable energy, IT, or other STEM-related fields.
• Modernize existing curriculum in agriculture, renewable energy, IT, or other STEM-related fields.
• Enhance good governance, financial planning and management, and institutional capacity building at Kazakhstani universities, including increasing the capacity of Kazakhstani universities to partner with or develop relationships with private sector or local industry.

The deadline for applications is Tuesday, December 6 (with possible extension).

For more information and to apply, please visit the American Councils website. American Councils is ready to support matchmaking among interested institutions of higher education.

In addition, American Councils will organize a U.S.-Kazakhstan University Virtual Partnerships Fair on Wednesday, November 16, at 9:00 p.m. as a networking opportunity to facilitate matchmaking among U.S. and Kazakhstani HEIs to co-design projects for partnership grants. U.S. and Kazakhstani HEI administrators and faculty members can connect through virtual breakout rooms. The session will help prospective partners draft an action plan (including goals, objectives, activities, outputs, and outcomes) for a partnership project.

Please register online.

If you are unable to attend the Virtual Partnerships Fair, we encourage you to register by completing a short questionnaire to help American Councils facilitate matchmaking with either a U.S. or Kazakhstani partner.

For more information about the U.S.-Kazakhstan University Partnerships Grants, please watch the recorded informational webinar.

We are pleased to announce that the New York State Office of Employee Relations has reached agreements with the unions to further extend the annual vacation accrual expiration for all bargaining units and Management/Confidential employees.

All unused excess annual leave can now be carried through December 31, 2023.

These changes will automatically be reflected in the SUNY Time and Attendance system; no action on your part is necessary.

Employees with questions about the extension of the leave expiration date can email the Payroll Office. 

The Buffalo State Percussion Ensemble concert with special guest WADE has been rescheduled for Thursday, November 10, at 7:30 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center. Admission is free. Please visit the Music Department website for more information about concerts and events.

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Correction: November 8, 2022
The original version of this announcement, published November 8, 2022, listed the incorrect date in the headline (December 10).

The Buffalo State community is invited to participate in a drop-in art and yoga event on Thursday, November 10, from 4:00 to 8:30 p.m. in Caudell Hall lobby. Students, faculty, and staff members can drop in and complete a hands-no art project from 4:00 to 8:30 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., we will be serving soup (nothing's better for self-care in the fall), and at 6:00, 7:00, and 8:00 p.m., we will have sleep yoga demonstrations. Come in comfy clothes to participate in yoga. The first 30 participants for yoga each hour will be able to select a yoga mat or a yoga blanket to use and keep! Arrive early for directions to the yoga room and to get set up to relax. Participants are welcome to come and go throughout the event. Everything is free. Please tell students to check out this opportunity and come along with them!