The dietitian education program will hold its annual fall sale on Thursday, November 18. This year we will have gourmet hot chocolate kits and Rice Krispies for sale, $3 each or a combo for $5. Choose from three hot chocolate flavors: peppermint, marshmallow, or cayenne pepper. 

All profits will be donated to the Friends of Night People organization, which "helps provide basic needs to those experiencing hunger, poverty, and homelessness." 

Please submit your orders by email. Thank you for your support.

Please join the Civic and Community Engagement Office for the webinar "The Doctor Is In: Using Faculty Connections and Partners to Increase Engagement" on Monday, November 8, at 2:30 p.m. This event is presented by the CUMU Learning and Sharing Virtual Series and is free to members of the Buffalo State community. 

Faculty connections and institutional partnerships can be leveraged strategically to increase engagement among alumni and friends. Learn how one institution took a new twist on an old concept through the creation of the Office Hours Virtual Series, featuring faculty experts participating in a question-and-answer session with alumni, donors, faculty, staff, and student attendees. Curiosities were piqued, relationships were renewed, and resources were highlighted across seven lively hour-long discussions hosted throughout the academic year.

The Office Hours Virtual Series was created in partnership with the Oakland University Alumni Association, Center for Civic Engagement, and Professional and Continuing Education as a way to engage alumni, students, faculty, staff, and community members with faculty subject matter experts who could speak on relevant, timely topics in an open, unscripted format. The “office hours” concept was highlighted because they wanted attendees to know they could drive the discussion through their own questions.

The presenters will talk about the Center for Civic Engagement’s mission to be a “convener of conversations” as an important element of the series, as the ability to curate respectful discussion around each of the topics was critical. They will detail the involvement of the Alumni Association and Professional and Continuing Education in managing and promoting the series, and they'll discuss the collaboration between all three areas in recruiting speakers for the seven sessions. Then, they'll walk through an analysis of attendees and program evaluations relative to their goal to increase engagement, as well as lessons learned and plans for the future.

The session presenters will be David Dulio, professor of political science and director of the Center for Civic Engagement; Erin Sudrovech, director of alumni engagement; and Amy Olind, assistant director of professional and continuing education, all of whom were involved in the series from its inception.

To conclude, they will offer a how-to guide to implement a similar series at your institution, regardless of size of staff or budget. With the right partners, this program can be scaled and executed with just a bit of coordination among staff and faculty members.

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Following this presentation will be "Localized Inclusive History Tours Serve as a Racism Reduction Strategy for Students in Health and Human Services Disciplines," featuring Farron Kilburn from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

She will address project background, goals, methodologies, outcomes, and replicability as outlined in the abstract below. (References and citations to all background can be provided upon request; they will be provided in a presentation format.)

Health disparities between White and Black residents in the U.S. are well known; Black people experience higher rates for diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease compared with others. In Tennessee, Black individuals are more likely to die from diabetes, kidney disease, stroke, and heart disease compared with White residents. Racism was noted in Healthy People 2020 as a contributing factor to health disparities for Black people, with White people receiving better quality of care over non-White people. Additionally, provider empathy lowers patients’ anxiety and distress and delivers significantly better clinical outcomes. Racism reduction strategies as well as methods for increasing empathy for health-care professionals are therefore one method for reducing discrimination and improving patient outcomes in the health and human services professions. Data supports that storytelling can both increase empathy and reduce racism.

This project incorporated a walking tour based on the localized history of civil rights, White supremacy, and anti-racist resistance into multiple courses representing various areas of study, including graduate nursing and undergraduate social work and sociology students at a University in the Southeast. The tour is well established and was created in partnership between historians and a social justice advocacy nonprofit. One hundred six participants completed the tour (37 in person and 69 virtually), and 67 fully completed the pre- and post-tour measurements for a response rate of 63 percent. The instrument included elements of the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) and the complete Symbolic Racism Scale (SR2K) as well as a set of questions about local civil rights history. Data was analyzed using SPSS and paired t-tests; factors include racial privilege, institutional discrimination, blatant racial issues, and awareness of local histories. Data reveal significant changes from pre- to post-tour assessment across all factors: symbolic racism (political environment (p.001), awareness of racial privilege (p.001), awareness of blatant racism (p.05), and awareness of local civil rights histories (p.001).

The activity includes a post-tour interprofessional debrief with students. Pre- and post-data reveals a significant reduction in racism and symbolic racism across all disciplines. As a result, the tour has been integrated in the NP program curriculum and other programs are considering it. Results indicate that collaborating with a local nonprofit or agency to learn about localized racial narratives through storytelling, whether in-person or through a virtual tour, is one methodology for reducing potential bias for graduate students in health and human service disciplines.

Please register online for this webinar and any others in the series you may be interested in.

Please join us for a conversation on supporting student success during this emotionally challenging time of change and transition on Monday, November 15, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. in Classroom Building B118. You will have an opportunity to share your experiences with students and get some feedback and suggestions for how you might respond in a trauma-informed way.

Learning Objectives:

• Define trauma and list examples of traumatic experiences.
• Demonstrate via discussion an understanding of unique responses to shared experiences such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Explain how trauma can affect learning and behavior.
• Learn strategies for responding to student behavior.

Registration is required. Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

On behalf of the Dean of Students Office and the Newman Center, we are pleased to continue the 1,000 Thanks and Giving program, a space for Bengals to give thanks to those in our campus community who have made a difference to them. Now in its sixth year on campus, the 1,000 Thanks and Giving program is continuing remotely. Please take a minute to complete a form online.

Every year we try to reach the goal of 1,000 thank-you notes to our community between November 1 and the Thanksgiving break. Once we receive the thank-you, we will get the note out to the recipient.  

If you have questions, please email deanofstudents@buffalostate.edu.

Please join us for the Teaching and Learning Center’s “Applied Learning Course Proposal Workshop,” presented by Ann Emo, professor and chair of the Theater Department and applied learning faculty coordinator, on Tuesday, November 9, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Butler Library 318.

Are you interested in integrating applied learning into your class? Are you already doing it? This workshop will walk you through the five tenets of applied learning at Buffalo State College so you can submit your class for Applied Learning Designation. Designation is assigned to individual instructors for each class that you teach. Please see the Applied Learning website for more information on the benefits of applied learning and the types of applied learning happening on our campus.

Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

Please email Ann Emo with questions.

The Buffalo State College community is saddened by the death of John L. Allen, professor emeritus of technology, who died October 6, 2021. Mr. Allen joined the college in 1964 and retired in 1992. He is survived by his partner, Cynthia L. Stewart; two children; five grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren. He will be buried in Mount Adnah Cemetery in Fulton, New York. More information is available online.

The Buffalo State College community is saddened by the death of Douglas P. Schmidt, janitor in Custodial Services (retired), who died March 24, 2021. Mr. Schmidt joined the college in 1983 and retired in 2007. Services were held in April. More information is available online.

This year, classes are scheduled on the Veterans Day holiday, Thursday, November 11. Department heads and supervisors should communicate to their classified and professional employees whether they will be required to work on that day.

Department heads and supervisors are encouraged to make every effort to consider requests to have the holiday off for employees who are veterans.

For employees who are required to work, the following state attendance rules will apply:

Classified employees who work on November 11 will be compensated according to their holiday waiver status. Those who have NOT elected to waive additional money for holiday work will receive holiday pay per their bargaining unit agreements. Employees who waived additional money for holiday work will receive compensatory time off instead of additional holiday pay. Classified employees who wish to inquire about their current holiday waiver status may contact the Payroll Office at (716) 878-4124.

UUP-represented and M/C employees who are eligible to observe holidays and are required to work on November 11 will be granted a compensatory day off.  The compensatory day off should be scheduled at a time agreeable to the employee and his or her supervisor within one year of the holiday.

Employees who are not required to work on November 11 do not need to charge leave accruals for that day.

Please join the Civic and Community Engagement Office for the webinar "A Case Study of a Service-Learning Group Project for Public Health Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic," presented by Rebecca Cheezum, of the Oakland University School of Health Sciences, on Friday, November 5, at 1:30 p.m. This presentation describes the implementation of a service-learning group project during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021 academic year). This project, which spanned fall and winter semesters, is required of all first-year master of public health students at Oakland University School of Health Sciences. Each group of six students was assigned to a community partner for the course of this project. In the fall semester, in a course titled Principles of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), groups focused on partnership formation and conducted a small needs assessment using qualitative research methods. Students generated a conference abstract, written report, and presentation. In the winter semester, the students continued their project in a class, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation of Public Health Interventions. They developed a theory- and evidence-based intervention and evaluation plan and wrote a grant proposal in response to a mock RFP. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all class sessions and project-related interactions with community partners and members were conducted virtually, using Zoom and Google Meets platforms. This presentation will describe the project requirements and structure, role of community engagement in the project (and program, more generally), feedback from community partners, ways in which the project was adapted for the pandemic, challenges faced, strategies for success, lessons learned, and components of the pandemic-related adaptations found to be beneficial that may be continued in the future.

Also included in this presentation are the following:

"The Past-to-Future Archaeology Partnership: Stem Outreach during a Pandemic," featuring Jon Carroll of Oakland University. The objective of Oakland University’s Past-to-Future Archaeology Partnership is to team with local school districts to offer high school students access STEM opportunities through archaeological field training. This discussion highlights the challenges and successes of launching such an effort during a global pandemic.

"Global Is Local: Developing Community-Engaged Partnerships during the Pandemic," presented by Cyndi Rickards, Drexel University; and Esther Koster and Marco Hofman, Amsterdam University. When COVID forced engaged scholars to pivot, Drexel and Amsterdam Universities brought students together each week in “policy pods” to analyze what makes a city just. The students compared data, history, and issues of equity while creating a unique learning community. This partnership has evolved to include city officials, urban policy experts and a travel component;

"Necessity Is the Mother of Invention: Rethinking Resources in the Face of a Crisis," presented by Kevin Corcoran and Diane Baldwin of Oakland University. A great deal of work on creativity focuses on the need to change our conception of what the role of a specific object is. Reconceiving a phone made it possible that the phone function as a camera or a credit card, or provide any number of other helpful applications. As a result, we will not see the phone in the same way ever again. Such “Eureka” moments often occur in the face of a crisis. A situation in which we don’t have access to what we think we need. In the spring of 2020 in the face of COVID-19, our campuses struggled to find the resources to continue to serve in partnership with our communities. Most, if not all, of our students were gone from campus; ditto our faculty and staff. Community members were concerned for their health and well-being. Yet the needs not only persisted, they accelerated. Our presentation focuses on how we changed the lens by which we viewed our Theatre Department, our student union, and our math faculty and students (among others) to address needs in our community. Our discussion concludes with consideration of how we can maintain this altered focus as we co-create a more nimble and brighter future.

This hour-long event is presented by the CUMU Learning and Sharing Virtual Series and is free to members of the Buffalo State College community. Please register online for this webinar and any others in the series you may be interested in.

The NYS Employee Assistance Program continues to host the very popular WellNYS Daily To-Do email. This program sends a daily email with a tip that encourages a healthful behavior. Sign up to receive the WellNYS Daily To-Do email every morning.

The WellNYS Everyday Monthly Challenge Program is another option that promotes practicing a healthful behavior for 20 days out of the month, which hopefully develops into a habit. Sign up for the WellNYS Everyday Monthly Challenge Program.

November Monthly Challenge: Practice thankfulness.