The fall 2020 addendum is a quick reference that can be used to verify classes that have been added; days, times, or instructional methods that have changed; and classes that have been canceled. The addendum can be found on the Registrar's Office Courses web page. Students are strongly encouraged to search for classes directly in Banner for the most up-to-date information.

For the fall 2020 semester (as of August 21, 2020), there have been

• 91 classes added
• 1,828 classes with a day, time, or instructional method change
• 245 classes canceled

Please encourage students to use Schedule Planner, the online planning tool, to make registration easier. While signed in to Banner, students can easily search for open classes only (classes that still have seats available) by clicking on the Scheduler Planner link, selecting the Open Classes Only option in the Course Status field, and selecting Fall 2020 in the term field.

Fall 2020 classes begin Monday, August 31. All students are strongly encouraged to resolve any registration-related issues no later than Friday, August 28. Please bookmark the link for detailed information on Registration Add Error messages.

Waitlists for fall 2020 will be turned off at the end of the second day of classes—that is, 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, September 1; however, students who are already on a waitlist will continue to have the opportunity to register for the class if a seat becomes available before the end of drop/add (11:59 p.m. Monday, September 7).

Additional information on waitlisting can be found on the Registrar's Office website.

The 2020–2021 “Conversations in and out of the Disciplines” series begins Friday, October 30, at 3:00 p.m., as Ruth Goldman, associate professor of media production in the Communication Department and coordinator of the women and gender studies program, presents “Cultivating Community: Interviewing as a Collaborative Process.” All talks this fall will be held on Zoom (details TBA). The Q&A and (virtual) wine and cheese reception will follow. Everyone is welcome.

Please also mark your calendars for the second talk of the semester, when John Torrey, assistant professor of philosophy, will present “The Possibility of Black Reparations” on Friday, November 20, at 3:00 p.m. Finally, stay tuned for more information about our upcoming talks this spring, which will include presentations by Jevon Hunter, Woods-Beals Endowed Chair in Urban Education in the School of Education and interim chair of the Social and Psychological Foundations of Education and Adult Education departments; Kristen Pastore-Capuana, assistant professor of English; and A. K. Shauku, assistant professor of political science and public administration.

The “Conversations” series was started over a decade ago by Ann Colley, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, to “celebrate and draw attention to the research being done in various departments at Buffalo State College.” Over the last few years, colleagues from Anthropology, Art Conservation, Art History, Biology, English, History, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, and Secondary Education, among others, have shared their work with the Buffalo State and Buffalo communities.

Higher education faculty members, teacher candidates, and K–12 providers are invited to join us for our third Lunch and Learn session on Thursday, August 27, from noon to 1:00 p.m. The topic, "Strategies for Establishing Routines and Procedures in an Online Learning Environment," will be presented by Todd Sundeen, associate professor in the School of Special Education at University of Northern Colorado.

Registration is required.

The University of Northern Colorado has robust online and hybrid offerings and is the largest teacher preparation program in the state. Please contact Shannon Budin, professor of exceptional education, with questions.

Buffalo State College's spring 2020 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) results are now available on the Institutional Effectiveness website. The NSSE surveys first-year students and seniors to assess overall levels of engagement and satisfaction. The results are very encouraging, reflecting the college’s deep commitment to quality education. Students responded at a rate that far outpaced SUNY and other New York public institutions. Most importantly, the results show continuous campus improvement as Buffalo State outperformed its comparison groups of institutions on many indicators.

Enjoy a new and improved search experience with the recent addition of Apache Solr to the college website. An open-source search platform, Solr is often selected for use with Drupal sites because of its cost-effectiveness, developer community support, reliability, feature set, and performance.

Look for a number of new features when searching any buffalostate.edu website, including filters, faceted search, customized and weighted results, range queries, and more. Spell-check and “did you mean” functionality are currently being tested and will be brought online shortly. In addition, the more than 700 “pinned” search results applied to the old Google Mini have been brought over to the new search engine. We’d like to hear what you think about the new search experience! Please send comments or questions to meehanme@buffalostate.edu.

The State University of New York will offer “Deliberation on Voting in the United States,” a live webinar in observance of Constitution Day for faculty, staff, and students, on Thursday, September 17. Constitution Day (or Citizenship Day) is an American federal observance that recognizes the adoption of the United States Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens. It is normally observed on September 17, the day in 1787 that delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document in Philadelphia.

Campuses that receive federal funding are required to provide some educational programming on this day. SUNY and its constituent campuses support civic engagement through SUNY Applied Learning and other initiatives. Civic engagement activities include political activities like voter registration, candidate forums, and civil and civic education activities that are associated with community engagement and developing students to be engaged citizens.

Please register for this Constitution Day event through the SUNY Center for Professional Development website.

As we prepare for fall 2020, please join us for the webinar "Q&A: Ensemble Video," presented by Todd Benzin, educational technology specialist, on Friday, August 28, from 10:00 a.m. to noon.

Attend this session and bring your questions and concerns about Ensemble Video and Anthem for creating, storing, and managing video. The lab will be "staffed" by members of the Instructional Design and Training team. Whether you have a general question about what the software can do or a more specific question about a feature or an issue you've been having, we will do our best to help. There is no agenda for this session; show up when you can within the allotted time and leave when you have to.

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. Questions can also be typed in the Chat window.

Please register through the Workshop Registration System.