Graduate Student Association

Please use the “Vote Now!” link on the 2015 Election Page to cast your vote in the GSA Officer Election and Referendum.  You will need your UB IT name and password to log in.  Results will be announced on the GSA listservs on Friday, April 10th.

Graduate Students of Color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)

You are invited to participate in an interview for a research study on Black and Latino graduate students in STEM fields. The goal of the study is to gather information about the experiences that led you to decide to attend graduate school, and your current experiences in your graduate program.

The interview will take about an hour and you will be compensated $10 for participating.

In order to participate you must:

1. Be a graduate student in a Master’s or Ph.D. program in a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics field

2. Self-identify as Black/African American or Latino/Hispanic

3. Be a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident

4. Be willing to share your experiences
For more information, please contact:
Nancy Campos, Ph.D. Candidate
Educational Culture, Policy and Society
ncampos@buffalo.edu

A “Mandatory” vote will maintain all GSA funding and services for graduate students.
A “Voluntary” vote will end all funding and services- GSA will no longer exist!

Have you ever applied for GSA conference funding? Has your student or department club held an event you enjoyed? Have you received free help from the Editorial Assistance program? Been to SBI Legal Assistance or the Student Medical Insurance office? Then you have benefited from the Graduate Mandatory Student Activity Fee! This fee funds GSA and Sub Board I services.

The State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees Guidelines requires all student governments to hold a referendum bi-annually for students to decide whether to continue the Mandatory Student Activity Fee, or to switch to a voluntary fee. A voluntary fee will mean that there isn’t enough money to fund these essential student services.

On April 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th graduate students can vote “mandatory” to keep these services alive. The mandatory student activity fee is collected from graduate students and then distributed to graduate students in the form of club funding, academic support, social events and other services. The GSA is currently funding more than 60 Departmental clubs, 10 International clubs and 15 Special Interest clubs. The current fee will not be raised as done in the past.

Please, help us to keep a well inter-connected graduate student community at UB by ensuring our future with your “MANDATORY” vote.

VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE  VOTE

Voting will take place online via a link on the GSA website from 12:00am on Monday, April 6th through 11:59pm on Thursday, April 9th. You will just need your UB-IT name and password in order to log-in. Please cast your vote!

Check out some of the great events GSA has to offer this month!

AFTER AMERICA: WASTELAND 2015
World Premiere Production of a play by Jon Elston (UB Theatre & Performance MA ’15)
Playing through 4/4/2015
At the Road Less Traveled Theater (Buffalo, NY)
Thursdays through Saturdays @ 7:30 PM / Sunday 3/29 @ 2 PM
Students pay only $5 on Thursday nights (w/ ID)
For tix & info: http://roadlesstraveledproductions.org/
45 second video promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob9z7lJKXkM
AFTER AMERICA: WASTELAND 2015
by Jon Elston (UB Theatre and Performance MA Candidate)
Directed By Scott Behrend & Katie Mallinson
03/13/2015 until 04/04/2015

Starring Lisa Vitrano, Peter Palmisano, Danica Riddick, Steve Brachmann, Monish Bhattacharyya, and Kelsey Mogensen.
Who Will Save The New World? Join Tommi – former waitress and newly appointed savior of the entire human race – as she leads you on a thrilling tour of America after the Apocalypse!

It’s 2015, and a skeletal United States government has spent two years struggling to restore some semblance of order. Only 919 confirmed American survivors remain, all of them housed at Camp Evangola (South of Buffalo, NY), where they receive training in the skills necessary to rebuild civilization. (That’s right – the country’s erstwhile Military Industrial Complex has been replaced by the Department of Education!) Now, one small group receives their final assignment: to venture deep into the heart of the dangerous American wasteland and prevent a devastating atomic threat.
This suicide mission unites Tommi with two other freshly redundant survivors – a Blogger and a Graduate Student – neither of who feel that their work experience qualifies them to save the world. The final member of the team is Justin Foch, pampered Libertarian industrialist and former Fourth Richest Man In America, who doesn’t even feel motivated to save a world that no longer acknowledges his wealth and status. Somehow, this ragtag squad of desperate Americans must overcome their differences and deficiencies; they must survive the myriad hazards of the Wasteland (particularly the zombies and the survivalist cannibals!); and they must protect the fragile remnants of humankind. Yet fractious political animosities continue to simmer to a boil — even deep inside an underground nuclear silo.

Before the Apocalypse, Tommi felt she had no control over her life (or anything else). Now, she’s equipped with an education and a fully automatic assault rifle, and the future of Western Civilization rests in her hands. RLTP’s original resident actress Lisa Vitrano plays Tommi, joining forces with playwright Jon Elston (author of 2012: End Of The Road)and a high-octane ensemble to present After America: Wasteland 2015… an action-packed alternate history and a fantastic fable of female empowerment.

Check out some of the great events GSA has to offer this month!

Check out some of the great events GSA has to offer this month!

The Department of Art at the University at Buffalo seeks submissions of short writing in two categories. Our Call for Writers requests 1500 word essays engaging the work of one of our graduating MFA candidates. The Open Submissions requests short essays, literature, or poetry that relates to one of the four thematic categories featured in the catalog. Please see details below.

Call for Writers:
Each year, the graduating MFA candidates team up with a writer who critically responds to their thesis work. The writers receive samples of the MFA candidate’s past and current artwork and are asked to engage with the artist either through studio visits, email or Skype. This will be the eighth year of the Graduate Catalog publication. The catalog will showcase images from each thesis exhibition along with the accompanying article about the work. The Department of Art conceives of the Graduate Catalog as an opportunity for producing a collaborative project between artists and writers, offering a platform for both to share their practice with the arts community at large. This year, the Editorial Board is looking for writers who have a MA/PhD or are currently enrolled in a MA/PhD program with a focus on critical writing (e.g. visual or cultural studies, women’s studies).

If interested in participating, please visit our catalog website where you will find links to the MFA candidates’ sample work and artist statements: https://ubartgrads2015.wordpress.com. For more information, please contact us at ubartgrads@gmail.com. We will be making decisions on writer/artist teams February 20th so please reach out prior to this date if interested in writing about an artist’s work.

Open Submissions:
The 2015 Graduate Catalogue will feature four themes culled from the MFA thesis work. As such, the Editorial Board is looking for scholarly essays, creative writing or poetry under 1500 words relating to one of the following themes. Deadline for Submissions: March 15th

• Abjection and Mortality: What are abjections of the self? Is it ever possible for the self or society to reconcile these abjections? In what space are abjection and mortality imbricated? When do they diverge? Is the act of abjection always a form of mortality? In this section of the catalog we are looking for submissions that deal with the interconnected relationship between abjection and mortality. As a disruption of social and cultural constructs, abjection and mortality are methods that the artists in this section utilize to question issues around queerness and blackness in contemporary society. In addition to working with the aforementioned themes, we also seek submissions concurrently investigating: Afro Futurism, the body, poststructuralism, phenomenology, imperialism and a wide range of sex organs (including, but not limited to, dicks, vaginas and boobs).
• Defacement and Opacity: In the Opacity & Defacement section, we welcome submissions that offer variations interpretations and extensions of these themes. Possible topics include portraiture in an expanded field; the face and faciality (in the Deleuzian sense: face as emergent machine or assemblage); masks and masking; various forms of visibility and invisibility, readability and illegibility, especially in relation to ontology; perceptual distortion; mediation; obscurantism (political, academic, artistic, etc); surface and depth; the inaccessibility of memory; the aesthetics of blur and the hazy or unfocused image; beauty/symmetry and its discontents. What is the political function of defacement, and how does it function in realms like protest culture or religious veiling? What is the relationship between the face and the “interface” of digital media? Is the face a necessary component of communication? Of humanity? Is there a non-human face? What philosophies of the face have emerged from contemporary art?
• Presence and Mediation: The artists in this section are interested in phenomenologies of sense and presence. How are entities – material or immaterial – felt and communicated with? How does the body impress and interface with its digital or concrete surroundings? How is material, digital or ethereal presence sensed and perceived? What role does mediation play in communication? What are the effects of imagined, desired, ghostly spaces to our corporeal selves? Topics nested under this theme may include, but are not limited to: consciousness, perception, the body/self, the unknown, interfaces, transcendent spaces, communication, biofeedback, relationality, distance and proximity, intimacy, presence/absence, phenomenology, ontology, hauntology, synaptic stutters, chance encounters, connection/disconnection and digital beings.
• Intervention and Environment: What types of meanings are acquired through interventions into natural and cultural environments? If cultural, is the intervention an inquiry into why a contemporary societal construct exists? If natural, does the intervention examine forms or patterns found in a specific geographic location? The interventions by the artists in this section, pose questions regarding the symbiotic relationships between people as a means for fostering critical dialog about cultural or natural constructs. In the Intervention & Environment section, these artists are considering topics such as: social practice, conversations about identity, femininity, representation, authenticity, visual literacy, social justice, site-specific, the sensorial, public engagement, revitalization, cross cultural dialog.

Distribution:
The 2015 Graduate Catalogue will be disseminated in its final form to public museums, universities, arts non-profits and other applicable arts institutions, both nationally and internationally. Additionally, this catalogue will build upon previous years through the development of a PDF format, thus making the publication digitally distributable across broader networks of the art world.

Graduate Students,

You may be unaware that at Michael Hall Student Health Center (South Campus) you have free chiropractic available Monday 1-5 pm, Wednesday 9-12 pm, 1- 5 pm abd Friday 9-12 pm.

Chiropractic can help with back pain, neck pain, headaches and other joint issues you may have.

Please call 716-685-9631 today for an appointment as we usually fill up fast.

Gerald Stevens DC,MS,MPH

Dear University Community:

On behalf of the School of Management, I am pleased to announce that our IRS-certified accounting students will again offer free tax preparation services to individuals and families with an annual income below $53,000. UB employees and students are encouraged to take advantage of this service and to invite their families and neighbors to do the same.

The service will be offered at South Campus, North Campus and, for the first time, Downtown Campus. Dates, times, locations, maps and other important details can be found at the link below:
http://mgt.buffalo.edu/freetaxprep

Tax preparation for nonresident aliens requires special processing that is beyond the scope of the services provided by Beta Alpha Psi volunteers. F-1 or J-1 students who have been in the U.S. for five years or less and J-1 scholars who have been in the U.S. for two years or less should contact International Student and Scholar Services for income tax filing assistance, or click here to find out if you are eligible to use Glacier Tax Prep, which will be available mid-February.

Sincerely,

Arjang A. Assad
Professor and Dean
School of Management