Throughout the academic year, the Civic and Community Engagement Office will highlight the efforts of our community-engaged and service-learning faculty members and community partners. We are grateful to all our faculty members who are engaged in this important work.

The mission of PUSH’s Grant Street Neighborhood Center is to provide an open, safe, and productive community space with resources and programs that respond to expressed community needs. In addition to serving as a drop-in community center, the Grant Street Neighborhood Center (GSNC) also serves youth through an extracurricular after-school space.

Although limited by the pandemic, students in lecturer Erin Habes’s FTT 189 Fashion Styling course have partnered with the youth at GSNC on fashion activities. The students taught activities and facilitated discussions with the youth about fashion and styling over the course of a few weeks. Many of the activities centered on upcycling techniques on denim donated by Goodwill WNY.  

Please consider giving your support to PUSH and the GSNC. Anyone interested in working with creative, diverse youth should e-mail Da’von McCune, the GSNC program manager.

Believe it or not, it's time to start preparing for the end of the semester and exam week. The excellent tutors at the Math Center can help you attack your math tests and finals head-on! We'll help you come up with a study plan, review your notes and homework assignments, and even assist you in making a study guide. Schedule some appointments in advance and we'll help you be successful.

Did you know you can also get immediate help? If you're stuck on a homework assignment or have a question about class, jump on to Bengal Success Portal to see who is available for an appointment right now. We'll help you make sense of your homework problems and show you some useful strategies for reading math textbooks and reviewing your notes.

Math tutoring is available from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Friday. We will continue to offer appointments through Wednesday, December 16. Please visit our website for more information and to meet your math tutors!

A portion of the campus steam system will be shut down from Saturday, November 28, through Tuesday, December 1, to allow for replacement of water heaters and related piping. 

There will be no hot water in Chase or Cassety halls during this period, and building temperatures will be cool. Occupants are asked to dress accordingly. Campbell Student Union will also be without hot water, but the heat will remain on. The Barnes & Noble at Buffalo State Bookstore will not be affected.

We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your understanding as we undertake this necessary maintenance work.

The Dean of Students Office and the Newman Center have made the fifth annual 1,000 Thanks and Giving program virtual this year. Please send a thank-you note to someone on campus who has had a positive impact on you this semester by filling out a note to them. Submissions close this Friday, November 20.

As we prepare for spring 2021, please join us for the webinar “Ensemble Anthem: Screen, Webcam, and Audio Recordings from Your Desk!" presented by Todd Benzin, educational technology specialist, on Friday, November 20, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.

Are you interested in a simple solution for creating videos from your own computer? Ensemble Anthem is a powerful Mac and Windows screen-capture solution supporting your lecture capture, screen capture, and flipped learning needs. Ensemble Anthem enables users to easily record their screen movements with audio or record video from a webcam. Once users have finished their screen capture, it is automatically uploaded into their Ensemble Video library and can be auto-published to any playlist or on Blackboard. If you would like to learn more about Anthem, join us for this information session and demonstration.

You can access the webinar using Todd Benzin's Training Room. Please review the BbCollaborate website to become familiar with using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra as a participant, if you'd like.

Google Chrome or Firefox is highly recommended as a browser. If you have a webcam and microphone, that's great. If not, you should be able to get everything you need as long as your headset or speakers are working.

Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

As we prepare for spring 2021, please join Todd Benzin, educational technology specialist with the Instructional Design and Training team, for "Educational Technology Office Hours" on Friday, November 20, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

This session has no set agenda. Registered attendees can "show up" and "leave" whenever they need to during the allotted time. While a full-scale training will not be possible during the office hours session, feel free to come with your specific questions on any of the platforms that Todd Benzin supports:

• Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, OneNote, Forms, Teams, etc.)
• Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
• Ensemble Video
• Ensemble Anthem and more!

You can access the webinar using Todd Benzin's Training Room. Please review the BbCollaborate website to become familiar with using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra as a participant, if you'd like.

Google Chrome or Firefox is highly recommended as a browser. If you have a webcam and microphone, that's great. If not, you should be able to get everything you need as long as your headset or speakers are working.

Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

As we prepare for spring 2021, please join us for the webinar "Ensemble Video (Campus Media Server): Introduction and Demo," presented by Todd Benzin, educational technology specialist, on Thursday, November 19, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m.

Ensemble is the media server solution that allows the Buffalo State community to store, manage, and publish their audio and video files into a learning management system (LMS) such as Blackboard and on other websites. If you would like to learn more about Ensemble, please join us for this Ensemble media server solution information session. Buffalo State is currently using version 5.2 of the platform.

You can access the webinar using Todd Benzin's Training Room. Please review the BbCollaborate website to become familiar with using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra as a participant, if you'd like.

Google Chrome or Firefox is highly recommended as a browser. If you have a webcam and microphone, that's great. If not, you should be able to get everything you need as long as your headset or speakers are working.

Please register through the Workshop Registration System.

As we prepare for spring 2021, please join us for the webinar “Blackboard Learn: Tests,” presented by Meghan Pereira, director of instructional design and training. Please register for one of the following sessions:

• Thursday, December 3, 9:30–10:30 a.m.
• Monday, December 7, 1:30–2:30 p.m.

This workshop focuses on the available online test options in the latest version of Blackboard Learn. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to create, configure, and deploy online testing in Blackboard Learn and look at several of Blackboard’s numerous question types.

The Great Lakes Center is pleased to release the fall issue of its newsletter. This issue focuses on the GLC's upcoming 55th anniversary, graduate student research, and our scientists' most recent publications about common terns and Texas hornshell mussels.

Fall 2020 newsletter (PDF, 3MB)

If you'd like to be on the mailing list for future editions of the newsletter, please send an e-mail to greatlakes@buffalostate.edu with the subject "Newsletter mailing list add."

As we prepare for spring 2021, please join us for the webinar “Debriefing Remote Learning: What the Heck Happened?” presented by John Draeger, director of the Teaching and Learning Center, on Wednesday, December 9, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. via Blackboard Collaborate.

The session will take stock of student learning during the transition to remote instruction. We’ll revisit what worked, what didn’t, and how we might make changes looking forward to whatever adventure might await us in the spring. We’ll discuss how to make decisions about delivery, engagement, and assessment based on the most essential learning elements. While technological solutions will be mentioned, the focus will be on creating a plan moving forward based on the recent past.

Please register through the Workshop Registration System.