The Daily Bulletin

As announced in the Daily Bulletin on Thursday, November 12, initial findings from the Campus Culture and Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Survey by the President’s Institutional Innovation Advisory Council (IIAC) were shared with the College Senate on Friday, November 13. Also as stated, today we are sharing a full copy of the IIAC’s findings with the campus community. The full report that was presented to the Senate is now available online via the College Senate's SharePoint (login required; PDF, 3 MB).*

In the weeks and months that follow, the IIAC’s research team will host a series of open forums and focus groups for the campus community to help interpret and build on the findings, starting with open forums on Thursday, November 19, and Friday, November 20.

Moreover, focus groups will be held through January 2021 to gather additional ideas and input from the campus community to inform the next strategic plan. More specifically, the IIAC is interested in connecting with faculty and staff members to learn more about the many ways our work environment and culture have shifted since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a reminder, the survey data were gathered in the weeks before COVID-19 transformed our campus, country, and world.

Please visit the Workshop Registration System to register for an open forum or a focus group. Additional focus groups will be scheduled in the coming weeks. We encourage our entire campus community to engage in the dialogue during this critical process.

These forums and focus groups are critical for identifying how we can be more intentionally innovative and agile to meet the challenges of the future. As the uncertainty of our world and of higher education has been further heightened because of COVID-19, our urban-engaged campus has an opportunity to amplify our communities’ strengths with new and innovative practices. These changes and improvements will help Buffalo State continue to serve as an educational engine for social and economic mobility that is responsive to these new realities.

These data will help provide insight to better understand the complexity of perspectives, priorities, strengths, and challenges of our community. How we engage with each other—both in interpreting this information and prioritizing strategies to help us thrive in the future—will determine the success of this important process.

The answers to creating a bright future for Buffalo State College and our students can be found within our amazing community. Together, we can amplify our strengths and learn what we must change to address our challenges. We encourage you to engage and contribute your ideas for charting the future of Buffalo State College as we learn and grow together to transform the future of our urban-engaged mission.

Sincerely,

Katherine Conway-Turner
President

Bhakti Sharma
Chair, College Senate
Associate Professor, Art and Design

Jonathan Hulbert
Chair, Institutional Innovation Advisory Council
Director, Leadership and Organizational Development

*To facilitate distribution and ensure accessibility of the IIAC’s report, the document was posted and shared via the College Senate’s SharePoint November 13 meeting folder. As noted previously, the report was compiled independently of the College Senate.