Buffalo State College's Student Leadership and Humanitarian Awards recognize students who help make Buffalo State truly extraordinary—students who go above and beyond, who answer the call to service, and who lead their peers and our campus with energy, care, integrity, vision, and creativity. Candidates for these awards are leaders in our campus community, participate in civic engagement and service, and demonstrate a commitment to something worthwhile and enduring. These are the qualities that help define Buffalo State as a truly civil and caring academic community. 

Applications and nominations are invited for the following Student Leadership and Humanitarian Awards: the Mildred Campbell Leadership Award, the Phillip Santa Maria Award for Student Leadership in Equity and Campus Diversity, the Phillip Santa Maria Memorial Award, the Luis M. Antonetti Student Humanitarian Award, and the Minnie and Joe Engel Student Humanitarian Award. We are using an online nomination and application process. The deadline for nominations is Friday, February 12, but we encourage early nominations to ensure that all deserving students are considered.

Nominations forms are available on the Dean of Students website. We encourage students to self-nominate, and we invite faculty and staff members to nominate deserving students for consideration. Recipients must be present on Tuesday, April 27, for the awards ceremony.

Questions about the Student Leadership and Humanitarian Awards can be addressed to the Dean of Students Office, Campbell Student Union 311, or by e-mail at deanofstudents@buffalostate.edu.

The Buffalo State College community is saddened by the death of Margaret A. “Peg” Banak, former senior staff assistant in Computing and Technology Services, who died recently in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Ms. Banak joined the college in 1983 and retired in 2011. She is survived by a brother and two step-siblings. A celebration of life will be held at a later date. More information is available online.

Please join us for the first presentation in the Data Science and Analytics Spring 2021 Seminar Series, "Cybersecurity and the Secret Service," presented by Tiffany Loar and Jamie Hart, special agents with the United States Secret Service, on Thursday, February 18, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Talking Points

• United States Secret Service (USSS) Missions
• USSS Cyber Specialties
• Buffalo Electronic Crimes Task Force
• Employment Opportunities/Marketable Skills

Please join the session through Zoom.
Meeting ID: 830 9133 8499
Passcode: 289948
Join by phone: (646) 876 9923 (New York)
Find your local number.
 

Buffalo State students, faculty, and school and community partners are invited to attend the free virtual workshop “Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Education,” presented by Gholnecsar “Gholdy” Muhammad, associate professor of language and literacy at Georgia State University, on Tuesday, March 23, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. Please register online.

In this session, Dr. Muhammad will clearly define culture, equity, anti-racism, and culturally and historically responsive education. Together, equity will be explored and revisited in deep, multifaceted ways, emphasizing the need for equity education across the nation. By the end of this session, educators will understand equity, anti-racism, and responsive education and will be charged with engaging in self-identity work. In addition, educators will be introduced to a five-layered equity model for teaching and learning: (1) identity, (2) skills, (3) intellectualism, (4) criticality, and (5) joy.

This event is sponsored by the Buffalo State Grant Allocation Committee, the Woods-Beals Endowment for Urban Education, the Buffalo State School of Education, the Buffalo State Professional Development Schools Consortium, and the New York State Master Teacher Program and partially funded by the Faculty-Student Association.

United Students Government will recognize four strong candidates who have shown leadership skills at Buffalo State College and throughout the community with spring 2021 USG Leadership Scholarships. The scholarships are open to full-time and part-time Buffalo State College undergraduates with a minimum overall GPA of 2.5 and sophomore to senior standing. Applications will be accepted on Bengal Connect until 11:45 p.m. Monday, February 15.

We are moving forward in the UUP Discretionary Award process. An updated schedule is available for next steps in the process. 

According to the Agreement between New York State and United University Professions (UUP), the state shall make available an amount equal to 0.5 percent of the total of the salaries of UUP members on the payroll as of June 30, 2020. All employees in the UUP bargaining unit (faculty, librarians, and professional staff) on the payroll as of June 30, 2020 (or April 30, 2020, for part-time employees whose employment expires prior to July 1, 2020), and active at the time of payment are eligible for discretionary award consideration. If an employee is on a leave without pay at the time of payment, the employee would be eligible to receive the discretionary award upon returning to the payroll.

As we move forward in the discretionary process, letters from President Conway-Turner notifying UUP employees who will receive a discretionary award will be sent to campus e-mail addresses today, January 25.  

UUP employees who do not receive an award letter are reminded that they may appeal the decision by Monday, February 1, 2021, as follows:

Any eligible faculty or professional staff member who is not notified by the president of an award by the designated date should assume that his or her name is not on the preliminary list. Employees not scheduled for an award and employees dissatisfied with the amount of their award may file an appeal with the Appeals Board. 

The Appeals Board includes the president, provost, vice presidents, CIO, deans, and other administrative staff selected by the president. The board will consider written appeals of no more than 600 words. The board meets in closed session, and testimony or personal appeals will be by invitation only.

Written appeals, addressed to the president, must be delivered no later than 5:00 p.m. Monday, February 1, 2021, via e-mail. Please do not deliver hard copy appeals to the President’s Office. All appeals should be sent electronically to uupdiscretionary@buffalostate.edu. Only appeals sent to that address will be considered.

Appeal candidates will be notified of the outcome of the appeal by a date to be determined.

Additional notification will be sent when we receive notification of an approved payment date.    

The 23nd annual Student Research and Creativity Conference (Digital SRCC 2021) will be held virtually at the conclusion of the spring semester in May, on Buffalo State College’s Digital Commons platform, open to the campus community. Asynchronous digital representations of 2020–2021 research and creative projects in poster; oral presentation; or film, performance, video, or artwork slideshow formats are cordially welcomed from undergraduate and graduate students in all disciplines. The SRCC online application will remain open to students through 10:00 p.m. Wednesday, March 17, with faculty mentor approval of student abstracts required by Friday, March 19.

The annual SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference (SURC 2021) returns virtually on April 16, 2021, with both synchronous and asynchronous sessions hosted by SUNY Old Westbury. Undergraduate projects completed during the 2020–2021 academic year are eligible, with online proposal abstracts due by Friday, March 12. The Undergraduate Research Office supports registration fees for all accepted Buffalo State student presenters and their faculty mentors. For more details, please visit the SUNY-SURC website.

Please join the Civic and Community Engagement Office for the webinar "Avoiding Microaggressions within Service Learning and Community-Engaged Learning" on Thursday, February 11, 2021 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. This event is presented by Campus Compact as part of its National Webinar Series and is free to members of the Buffalo State College community. Speakers are Kirsten Case Fuller, Julie Dierberger, and Latrina Parker.

Community-engaged experiences provide the opportunity for faculty members to collaborate authentically and reciprocally with partners who often represent historically disenfranchised communities where policy, resource allocation, and deficit-based communication strategies had an impact on growth, perception, and development. This recipe results in implicit bias that exists in everyone, and as a result, microaggressions occur. That is exactly what happened on our campus and in our community. As community engagement professionals, during our support of faculty service-learning instruction and implementation, we started to see and hear an increasing number of microaggressions from faculty members, community partners, and students. In response to these microaggressions occurring within service-learning experiences on our campus, we developed workshops for students, faculty, staff, and community partners to dedicate time and space to explore their journey with these concepts and to arm them with tools and strategies to address bias in community engagement work and to respond to microaggressions when they occur. This interactive session provides attendees with hands-on learning about implicit bias, microaggressions, microresistence strategies, and lessons learned from one campus’s journey to involve all community engagement stakeholders in these conversations. Participants will explore how they can engage their campus and community in opportunities to learn about microaggressions and microresistance and to develop strategies for their own community-engaged work to address these issues.

Please register online for this webinar and for as many others in the National Webinar Series as you would like.

The Civic and Community Engagement Office will host Civic Engagement Week March 29–April 2. This week will feature opportunities for the campus community to learn about community concerns during virtual presentations and identify ways to take action.

Three virtual presentations are being planned between March 29 and April 2. These will be excellent opportunities for faculty members to include in syllabi or offer as extra credit. Presentations will be recorded for students to access after the live sessions conclude. 

More information will be shared with the campus community in the coming weeks in the Daily Bulletin and on the CCE website. 

Please contact Aurora Schunk, assistant director of civic and community engagement, with questions.

The Buffalo State College Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, located in Caudell Hall 149, offers free individual and group accent-modification instruction for faculty, staff, and students. All sessions will be virtual during spring 2021. Space is limited; participants will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, please call 878-3530 or e-mail the clinic.