Buffalo State's Business Department is committed to providing students with a quality learning environment where our diverse student body can learn, grow, and prepare for successful careers. With a focus on hands-on learning, dedicated faculty members work one-on-one with students, utilizing their experience, their research, and a strong curriculum designed for success.
Vision, Mission, Values
Vision Statement
The Business Department strives to be a thought leader in higher education by enabling high-quality experiential learning that empowers our graduates to be impactful global citizens with a passion for serving others through leadership.
Mission Statement
The Business Department creates value for the local community and beyond by preparing students to lead, serve, and succeed in careers in the global community. We are a school of opportunity providing a diverse student-centered environment with a specialized business program both in and outside of the classroom. Our faculty maintain expertise through applied and pedagogical research.
Core Values
Diversity of thought: The understanding that the way each person interprets and interacts with the world is reflective of their unique identity, culture, and personal experiences.
Accessibility: All campus citizens are afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use.
Excellence: Promoting and supporting rigorous expectations for learning, teaching, and scholarship.
Enrichment: Supplementary educational programs designed to enhance students' academic experience and challenge them academically.
Integrity: Making ethical decisions, asking questions, and following instructions, even when faced with difficult situations.
Respect: Kind and considerate behavior toward students, teachers, and administrators.
Ethical Practices: Modeling high professional standards and exemplary personal behavior.
Collegiality: The sharing of expertise with colleagues to further everyone's learning.
Self-awareness: The ability to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts and enhance life-long learning.
Adaptability: The capacity of individuals to adjust their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in response to new, changing, or uncertain situations.
Our Faculty
Our faculty is committed to teaching and learning as its primary responsibility, with a secondary emphasis on applied scholarship and instructional development. Both faculty and students engage in outreach activities intended to promote economic development in Western New York.
Department History
The Business Department at SUNY Buffalo State was established in 1979. Since that time, the department has been one of the largest and most sought-after majors at the college with an estimate of more than 6,000 graduates.
In 1979, the department offered:
- Undergraduate Level
-Special studies programs in Business and Office Administration
-Teacher preparation programs in Business Education and Distributive Education
- Graduate Level
-Teacher education programs in Business Education and Distributive Education
During the past four decades, there have been many changes in the department and its programs.
- The 36-hour Office Administration program was designed for students transferring from two-year programs in secretarial science.
- Enrollment in secretarial science programs declined in the 1980s due to changing office technology and the enrollment in Office Administration declined as well.
- The program was deactivated in the early 1990s.
- The Business Department was able to concentrate resources on the Business Studies program and, in the late 1980s, expanded its initial 36-hour program to a 42-hour program.
- This program remained until the current 60-credit-hour B.S. in Business Administration was implemented in 2003.
- In fall 2005, the college completed a major reorganization of academic departments from three faculties to four schools. The Business Department, initially a member of the Faculty of Applied Science and Education, became a member of the School of the Professions. The Business Education and Marketing Education majors (both undergraduate and graduate) moved to the School of Education after a department vote. The department still services the needs of these business education majors with the offering of many business courses required in their major.
- The department now offers only a major in Business Administration. The Business Administration program remains the largest and most popular major at SUNY Buffalo State.
- In 2019, a graduate business program, an M.S. in Management, was approved by SUNY. It is hoped to start this program by fall 2021.
There were several reasons for developing the 60-credit-hour Business Administration major.
- First, and most important, the 60-credit requirement is consistent with the common practice of business programs in the United States and around the world.
- Second, the 60-credit program allowed the establishment of concentration areas to provide students with a more in-depth and focused educational experience.
- Third, the department has always been interested in achieving accreditation as a business program. The department initially chose to become a member of the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE) but dropped that membership and joined AACSB International (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). Schools accredited by the prestigious AACSB International are required to establish high standards in education and services, to offer quality programs, and to conduct frequent assessment. Due to a reduction of faculty size, the department has returned to being an education member of IACBE.
The continued growth of our Internship Program under the leadership of Professor Lynne Scalia and the growth of service learning through international projects by Dr. Christine Lai in Croatia should be noted. Business students have also had short term study programs in China and opportunities for international studies for a semester at partner international universities