What is Neuroscience?
- How does the brain work to control our everyday interactions with our environment? And what happens when things go wrong?
- UB’s interdisciplinary neuroscience program utilizes a molecules-to-behavior approach to answer these questions.
- Examine neuroscience at the level of individual genes, cells, organs, neural circuits and animal/human behavior.
Any students interested in more information on the new neuroscience major or how to pursue it should plan to attend our informational session.
Tuesday, November 19th from 3:00-4:00pm in Capen 107.
This
is a great opportunity to learn more about the curriculum and
opportunities available with this exciting new degree program.
If you are unable to attend please email Shannon Brown
smbrown3@buffalo.edu
The Student Success Strategies Series and Peer Coaching Network opportunities are now open to NEW FRESHMAN (whether or not they were marked “at-risk” in a UB Seminar or ENG105 class).
- Deal effectively with any potential barriers or challenges to making a smooth transition to college
- Develop and strengthen behaviors, skills and strategies that will help you move confidently toward academic success
- Connect with experienced UB students* who can share how they learned to be successful
- Ensure yourself a greater chance for success and achievement of your personal and academic goals
Weekly workshops will be held in the Greiner Hall B Wing classrooms:
Week 2: Time Management
Tues. 10/22 6:00-7:30 pm
Wed. 10/23 7:00-8:30 pm
Week 3: Self-Care
Tues. 10/29 6:00-7:30 pm
Wed. 10/30 7:00-8:30 pm
Week 4: Class & Course Skills
Tues. 11/5 6:00-7:30 pm
Wed. 11/6 7:00-8:30 pm
Week 5: Study Smart
Tues. 11/12 6:00-7:30 pm
Wed. 11/13 7:00-8:30 pm
*Attend one or all of the workshop series and connect
with a Peer Success Coach. To sign up for a Coach go
to https://forms.gle/znLYWKkhtvY57Xkb9.
*For the workshops just show up! Light food will be served.
*Questions?: email studentsuccess@buffalo.edu
The School of Social Work is offering a new minor in Community Organizing and Development.
The School of Social Work is also offering several spring Social Work undergraduate-level electives, open to all majors and non-degree students. Register as normal, but if you have questions about a course, please email them at swinfo@buffalo.edu.
SW 140 Organizing and Advocacy
#21843,
Monday, Wednesday 10:00 a.m. to 11:20 a.m., Location TDB
This
course focuses on the nuts and bolts of organizing and the strategies
that inform advocacy with an emphasis on the roles social capital has on
networking effectively across groups and
systems. Because the skills and tasks of organizing and advocacy are
predominately to catalyze and agitate for change, students will examine
relevant policies and learn how to identify and map the distribution of
power they promote particularly as they influence
access to services and support in neighborhoods and communities. With
an understanding of power and its impact on community capacity building,
students will explore and engage in opportunities to apply
cross-cultural communication in traditional media and
public speaking. (3 cr. hr.)
SW 150 Social Media in Social Change, #21844,
Tuesday, Thursday 6:00 p.m. to 7:20 p.m., Location TBD
The
purpose of this course is to familiarize students with social media and
social networking as they influence community change. Specifically,
students will be introduced to the fundamental
terms and concepts of social media and networking, including various
interfaces, tools, and platforms that may be leveraged to promote
community change and development. Students will also explore existing
scholarship and best practices, as well as issues of
social justice, burdens of adversity, social disadvantage, and human
rights as they apply to the democratization of technology. Students will
examine the challenges, opportunities, and future applications of
social media and networking related to community
change. (3 cr. hr.)
SW 230 Theories and Policies of Community Organizing and Development (Hybrid), #23952, Tuesday, Thursday 10:00 a.m. to 11:20
a.m., Fillmore 325, North Campus
This
course provides students with an understanding of the ways in which the
history of community organizing and development informs community
theory and policy across urban and rural settings.
With an emphasis on group development theory, students will be
introduced to the major theories and policies that impact
neighborhood/community capacity, including but not limited to theories
of poverty, inequality, human rights, urban and rural community
organizing and development, and neighborhood organizing. A particular
focus is the intersection of these theories and policies within this
framework that can create social capital and foster entrepreneurship,
social innovation, and cross-sector collaboration.
(3 cr. hr.)
SW 235 Responses to Child Maltreatment, #21841, Monday, Wednesday 10:00 a.m. to 11:20 a.m, Clemen 106 North Campus
This
course focuses on interdisciplinary system responses to child
maltreatment, including trauma-informed and human rights-based
approaches. The course explores responses across multiple
community systems, including child welfare agencies, health care
systems, law enforcement, and schools. This course is designed for, but
not limited to, students who are interested in public health, social
work, human services, nursing and other health professions,
sociology, psychology, law, and education. (3 cr. hr.)
SW 245 Global Child Advocacy Issues, #21842, Tuesday, Thursday 10:00 a.m. to 11:20 a.m.,
351 Millard Fillmore Academic Center (MFAC), North Campus
This
course is designed to increase student understanding of the adverse
experiences of children growing up in various countries. The purpose of
this course is to expose students to considerations
of socioeconomics, health, culture, religion, and politics and how
these affect the welfare and well-being of children across the world.
This course examines advocacy efforts using a trauma-informed, human
rights framework.
(3 cr. hr.)
SW309LEC Developing Leadership in Communities, #
23953, Monday/Wednesday 6pm-7:20pm, Talbot 106, North Campus
Description:
This course focuses on development of leadership skills and strategies
that foster community engagement and strengthen the natural leadership
of residents within neighborhoods and
communities. Students will examine theories of leadership and the ways
in which they influence organizational structures that promote community
well-being. Central to this course is the acquisition and application
of strategies that can be used to enhance
the development of skills as well as the exercise of leadership by
neighborhood and community resident. (3 cr. hr.)
SW 401 Black Masculinities (Undergraduate and Graduate)
# 23572 (UNG), #24048 (GRAD) Wed, 9-11:50am Obrien 210, North Campus
This
course concerns the exploration of Black masculinity and the various
policies that shape how Black male identity is viewed in America and how
those policies shape the gendered perspectives/behaviors
of the Black male. Consistent with an interdisciplinary approach the
course will focus on a number of domains that impact Black men such as
the prison industrial complex, poverty, violence, education and draw
from a number of disciplines such as social work,
history and sociology. We start our consideration of this topic with an
examination of the institution of slavery in America between the
17th century and the beginning of the 20th century
which set the
foundation for Black masculinity in America. Theories that aim to
explain Black male outcomes will be incorporated throughout the course. (3 cr. hr.)
SW101 Human Biology,
online, #22209
This course will
provide a foundational understanding of human biology with emphasis on
the biological bases of behaviors and issues of concern to social
workers. This course is designed to meet the human
biology prerequisites for Masters in Social Work students, and will
cover the basics of human biology including anatomical systems and
structures, development from conception through aging and death;
genetics, evolution, and biological and environmental interactions.
The focus of the course is not only on biology but also on the critical
analysis of the interplay between human biology and social issues.
Discussions will cover the biological bases of phenomena including but
not limited to addictions, mental illness, sexuality,
and aggression. Emphasis throughout the course also will be placed on
biological processes related to trauma and stress.
Posted by Tim on October 11, 2019 in Academics
General guidelines for placement in French, Italian and Spanish courses.
Any student in need of information on placement in a language course in French, Italian and Spanish should fill out the Placement Information Form.
Responses will be given to those placement requests within 24-48 working hours as long as students complete the form with as much detail as possible, not leaving out any information on their experience.
FR 481: Dreams of the new in Postwar France
Wednesdays 4-6:40 p.m.
Room TBA…will be on north campus and likely in a seminar room
Professor Fernanda Negrete
Open to all majors….no prerequisites!
Registration #: 23546
A number of French writers, thinkers, and artists after
World War II proposed radical notions of the
new. They decided that the only way to revive language, space, and time,
after these key elements of symbolic life had collapsed under the traumatic
events of the Holocaust, was to begin creative work at “degree zero”: by
starting without the guidelines and standards left behind by cultural
traditions in a world that had fallen apart. In other words, these French
authors, through experimental fiction, theory, cinema, and theater confront the
destruction of the collective and of its very stage to ask what it means to
think and write, to make an artwork, or to build and inhabit a city after it
has been shattered by human acts of violence.
To think “the new” also entails
asking what it means to remember, dream, and repeat. In colloquial speech we
talk about “our dreams” as our great wishes and projects for the future. For
its part, Freudian dream theory —where dreams refer to the productions we carry
out in our sleep— claims that a dream is the fulfillment of a wish. But what
happens when the future “our dreams” envision has been shattered? What kinds of
wishes are left? And how do we understand nightmares here? Freud himself asked
this question by thinking of (WWI) war veterans’ insistent nightmares, and
discovered an important function of repetition in the unconscious, which is
especially relevant when the work of remembering faces the obstacle of trauma.
This unique sense of unconscious repetition was key for both psychoanalysis and
the French authors who developed New Wave cinema, the New Novel, “writing
degree zero,” as well as other new conceptions of community (Freud, Agamben,
Nancy, Blanchot, Guattari, Oury and Guattari) and the subject of unconscious
desire.
This seminar will involve
discussions in different formats (roundtable, small groups) around texts,
films, plays, viewings, invited lectures. Evaluation will be based on consistent
attendance and participation supported by preparation, and on mid-term and
final papers (5-6 pages for the midterm, 9-10 pages for the final).
MHIRT Introduction
The San Diego State
University Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research
Training program (SDSU MHIRT) is a component of the national MHIRT program
funded by the National Institutes of Health. We provide international training
experiences to students from health disparity backgrounds with a goal of
encouraging such students to pursue careers in biomedical, clinical, and
behavioral health research. The ultimate mission of the MHIRT program is for
MHIRT trainee alumni, through their careers as researchers and medical
professionals, to work to reduce, and eventually eliminate, healthcare
disparities in the United States.
The
SDSU MHIRT Program is always interested in receiving applications from
exceptional candidates. In addition to meeting the below criteria, we are
looking for applicants with a high level of emotional maturity,
professionalism, and dedication to improving the research and outcomes of
populations affected by health disparities post matriculation. To be eligible
for the MHIRT program you must, at minimum, meet the following criteria: You
must be a US citizen or permanent resident.
- You
must come from an NIH specified minority group underrepresented in
biomedical research. (Please visit our Program Overview page for more
information).
- You
must have a GPA of 3.0 or higher.
- Undergraduate
applicants must have junior or senior class standing at your institution.
Previous undergraduate research experience is highly recommended.
- Master’s
students must have previous research experience in the area of our MHIRT
training programs.
- You
must show a commitment to pursuing a career in research, public health, or
another field, focused on health disparities.
TH 425-Media and Performance Seminar
Professor Lindsay Hunter
Registration #: 301130
Mondays and Wednesdays 3-4:20 p.m.
188 Alumni Arena
Course description: This course will consider various forms of mediated and
intermedial performance in order to examine the particular habits,
possibilities and affinities of performance in mediatized contexts.
Possible areas of focus include television and televisual performance,
intermedial theatre, and performance in video gaming and in online contexts.
For Spring 2020, we will consider the ways
representational media’s power to dissemble and intersects with the theatrical
urge toward enacting the artificial to produce the phenomenon of hoaxing, in
which a constructed falsehood masquerades as true and actual. Though the
concerns of this course are perhaps best demonstrated by the contemporary
phenomenon of “deepfakes”—that is, video doctored by artificial intelligence so
that it appears to document happenings that never occurred—the use of
representational media to present the fraudulent as real is hardly new.
Victorian spirit photography, allegations of faked moon landings, and
purposefully misleading journalism all point to the facility media possess,
even in a pre-digital era, to enact misrepresentation on a large scale. The
easy manipulability of digital media, however, certainly brings concerns about
hoaxing, fraudulence, and representational dishonesty into new territory, requiring
us to refine our critical perspectives: what separates the hoax from mere
untruth or disingenuousness, or from the artifice and illusion of
theatre? In an effort to better parse the unique possibilities and
affordances of the hoax, we will investigate its performative nature—that is,
its manifesting in the world through enactment—as well as the ways deception
and representation collude in the hoax’s constitutive acts.
Consider taking an Honors seminar this spring! There are three courses offered and they are all open to ANY major and there are NO Prerequisites for these courses for Honors scholars.
CSE 410: Algorithms have arrived. What’s Next?
registration #: Please contact Tim Matthews for registration into this course at trm7@buffalo.edu
Professor Atri Rudra
214 Norton Hall
Algorithms make decisions in all parts of our
lives, starting from the mundane (e.g. Netflix recommending us movies/TV
shows), to the somewhat more relevant (e.g. algorithms deciding which ads
Google shows you) to the downright worrisome (e.g. algorithms deciding the risk
of a person who is arrested committing a crime in the future). Whether we like
it or not, algorithms are here to stay: the economic benefit of automation
provided by algorithms means companies and even governments will continue to
use algorithms to make decisions that shape our lives. While the benefits of
using algorithm to make such decisions can be obvious, these algorithm
sometimes have unintended/unforeseen harmful effects.
This class will look into various algorithms in use in real life and go into
depth of both the societal as well as technical issues. For students who are
more technologically inclined, the hope is that this course will open their
eyes to societal implications of technology that such students might create in
the future (and at the very least see why claiming “But algorithms/math
cannot be biased” is at best a cop-out). For students who are more
interested in the societal implications of algorithms, the hope is that this
class will give them a better understanding of the technical/mathematical
underpinnings of these algorithms (because if you do not understand, at some
non-trivial level, how these algorithms work you cannot accurately judge the
societal impacts of an algorithm).
Overall the hope is that students who will build the technology of the future
will be equipped to grapple with societal implications of their work (note that
we are not saying that folks building technology need to be activists but when
presented with two viable technical options they would pick one that has more
societal benefits) and students who will be the future decision-makers can make
more informed decisions on how algorithms can impact others (note that we are
not saying that decision makers should create algorithm themselves but they should
be able to understand how algorithms interacts with real life data).
Pre-requisites: Section A1 (which is for CSE majors) has a pre-requisite
of CSE 331 OR CSE 474. Section A2 (which is meant for non-CSE majors) has no
formal pre-requisites (besides being a junior in their major). For both
sections, willingness to think beyond your usual boxes and openness to
unfamiliar ideas will be crucial.
Tentative Logistics
The main graded component for the students will be a project that the students
will be working on over the semester. The students will form groups of size 2-3
(depending on class size) and explore application of algorithms on some segment
of society. Ideally, the group should not have everyone from the same school.
The students are expected to come up an impact of the chosen algorithm in the
said segment of society that has either not been studied before or has received
little attention (either in popular media or academic research). The group is
supposed to identify a potential research question that can be investigated
further (some initial suggestions will be provided). The mini project will have
three main components: (1) a written report, (2) a YouTube video and (3) a demo
of a prototype. The students will submit a preliminary version of the report by
the middle of the semester so that they can get feedback from the instructor
that they can use towards their final report, video and prototype. Tentatively,
the final report should be up to 10 pages and the video up to 10 minutes long.
Each group will also meet with the instructor every week for a short (<= 10
mins) update on their progress in the last week. This is to ensure that the
groups are making sufficient progress as the semester moves along.
Students in Section A1 are expected to be the main contributors in their group
of building the prototype while students in Section A2 will be the primary
contributors in their group to looking into the societal implications of their
project. Students in two sections will be graded differently on the prototype
based on their primary contributions.
Every week, the class will focus on one segment of society (e.g. criminal
justice system or human resources (i.e. hiring)) and discuss the impact of
algorithms on that segment of society OR will talk about a stage in the
algorithm development pipeline. Students will be expected to participate in the
in-class discussion. Whenever possible, we will have domain experts (e.g.
someone from law school talking about the criminal justice system) come and
talk during the week.
Depending on the class size, the last week (or two) will be used to screen the
videos that various student groups have submitted and the groups will
answer any question or address any comments/thoughts that the class might have.
All this feedback will be incorporated in the final report and prototype, which
will be due in the finals week. We will use the final exam time for demo of the
prototypes.
Any followup
Questions?
If you would like to know more about this course, please stop by for Atri’s Honors College office hours from 2-3:20pm on Thursdays in Capen 106C. If that does not work, please feel free to email atri@buffalo.edu
Exercise Science will be offering a new course in Spring 2020 titled: ES 352 Sports Nutrition for Coaches. This is a 3 credit course that will be offered online. The course is open to any student with a junior or senior standingwho has completed the following prerequisites: NTR 108 Human Nutritionand NTR 109 Nutrition in Practice. This course is well-suited to students who are currently coaching sports teams or planning to become sport coaches in the future. The course will also benefit student athletes who would like to gain a better understanding of how nutrition affects sport performance.
Course description: The
best technical instruction, coaching methods and conditioning regimens
are beneficial only if an athlete’s body is properly fueled and able to
operate at peak efficiency.
This course will provide scientific-based nutrition information and
nutritional advice that coaches and athletes need in order to improve
and maintain optimal performance. This course presents nutritional
concepts tailored for application by advanced athletics
in any sport.
The American
Institute of Indian Studies welcomes applications for its summer 2020 and
academic year 2020-2021 language programs. Programs to be offered include Hindi
(Jaipur), Bengali (Kolkata), Punjabi (Chandigarh), Tamil (Madurai); Marathi
(Pune), Urdu (Lucknow), Telugu (Hyderabad), Gujarati (Ahmedabad), Kannada
(Mysore), Malayalam (Thiruvananthapuram), Mughal Persian (Lucknow), Sanskrit
(Pune) and Pali/Prakrit (Pune). We will offer other Indian languages upon
request. For summer Hindi we require the equivalent of one year of prior Hindi
study. For summer Urdu, we require the equivalent of one year of either Hindi
or Urdu. We can offer courses at all levels, including beginning, in other
Indian languages for the summer. Summer students should apply for FLAS or other
funding if available at their institutions to cover the costs of the program.
Funding for Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu is available through the U.S.
State Department’s CLS program (see www.clscholarship.org). AIIS has some funding available for
summer students who cannot procure their own funding. This funding is allocated
on the basis of the language committee’s ranking of the applicants. AIIS will
award language fellowships, on a competitive basis, to academic year and fall
semester students, which would cover all expenses for the program. Those
eligible for these fellowships are U.S. citizens or permanent residents who
will have had the equivalent of at least two years of prior language study by
September 2020. AIIS offers Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Urdu and other languages at
all levels for the fall and academic year although fellowships would only be
available for students who will have had the equivalent of two years of prior
language study by the beginning of the program.AIIS will offer
funding to masters students to complete a capstone project of their choosing
upon completion of the summer program. The application deadline is December
31, 2019. Applications can be downloaded from the AIIS web site at www.indiastudies.org.
For more information: Phone: 773-702-8638. Email: aiis@uchicago.edu.
