Mission Statement

The mission of Butte College Business Education Department is to prepare students to be successful when entering the world of business and to continue in lifelong education. We value our students’ success and place respect, accountability, and excellence as our core values. 
 
Vision  statements specific to each of the Department of Business Education Programs are as follows:
•  The Accounting Program believes focuses on preparing students to become detail-oriented and able to understand and prepare accurate financial data. 
•  The General Business Program prepares students to be successful as they enter and pursue careers in business fields such as retail management, small business management, marketing, sales and advertising, in both profit and non-profit organizations, operating in today’s global environment.    
•  The Economics Program provides students with intellectual and analytic tools necessary to gain an understanding of economic theory and policy as a way to address issues facing our society. 
•  The Real Estate Program prepares students to take the California Real Estate Sales and Brokers exams and successfully list, sell and invest in real property.

Program Description

The Department of Business Education includes 4 programs/disciplines:  Accounting, Economics, General Business(Marketing, Management and Small Business Management), and Real Estate.  In addition, the department has two major focuses, both of them central to the College’s mission:  The Business Administration Transfer Program and The Department of Business Education Career Programs.  
 
•  The Transfer Program offers an A.S. Degree and facilitates transfer to Bachelor of Science programs, such as the two degree programs offered by Chico State’s College of Business:   Business Administration (BADM) and Business Information Systems (BIS).   
•  The Department of Business Education Career Programs (with certificates, Certificates of Achievement and A.S. degrees) develop and enhance students’ work-related competencies.  These programs facilitate local economic development and workforce training as they help to create a skilled, professional, entry-level workforce in Butte and Glenn Counties, and offers opportunities for skills enhancement of existing personnel. 

The following certificates are currently available: 
•  Accounting Program Certificates:  Accounting Certificate of Achievement;  Account Clerk Certificate; Tax Preparer Certificate  
•  General Business Program Certificates:  Business Management Certificate of Achievement; Retail Management Certificate of Achievement; Marketing Certificate of Achievement; Small Business Institute Certificate; Business on the Web Certificate; Human Resources Certificate  
•  Real Estate Program Certificates:  Real Estate Certificate of Achievement; Real Estate Sales Person Certificate; Appraiser Certificate. 

The following Associate of Science (A.S.) degrees are currently available:
•  Business Administration AS (transfer degree to Chico State)
•  Business Administration AS-T (transfer degree to CSU schools)
•  Accounting 
•  Business Management (including 3 options:  Business Management, Retail Management and Small Business/Entrepreneurship) 
•  Marketing 
•  Real Estate.

Accountability for Previously Funded Items

Student Learning/Administrative Unit Outcomes

Bus 25 – SLO G: Write a comprehensive business plan that provides an organized overview of the venture and identifies key business strategies and tactics.

Going forward we will present the Business Plan as one project and require them to turn-in rough drafts of sections of the project throughout the semester to provide an opportunity for the instructor to address areas where students are struggling with further instruction. Finally, they will turn in the complete written business plan and present their plan. 



Econ 2 – SLO’s 1-4: Identify and interpret macroeconomic data, apply macroeconomic models to understand the economy, analyze the economic impacts of monetary and fiscal policy, demonstrate an understanding of the function of the central bank and the banking system.



Since we saw no pattern in the students’ deficiencies, we don’t plan any major revisions.  We all continue to update our teaching materials as current events compel us to change and modify our curriculum to be timely and interesting to our students.  We would like to use this opportunity to stress that enforcing the established math prerequisite will improve our students’ learning.  Though instructors and counselors inform students of these prerequisites, students continue to enroll without the proper preparation.   Hopefully, the school will begin to enforce prerequisites electronically.



RLS 30 – SLO B: Identify common problems incurred while transferring ownership or interest in real property and the basic documents (deeds, liens, affidavits, contracts, mortgages, etc.) used to correct these problems.



 Overall students were successful in each of the student learning objectives.  However, one area where students struggled was in accurately completing a listing agreement.   Many students listed themselves as the listing agent rather than using the brokerage firm.  Alan intends to have students complete the listing agreement again in class improve students understanding of this concept. 



 Acct 2 – SLO D & O: Apply transaction analysis, input transactions into the accounting system, process this input, and prepare and interpret the four basic financial statements.  Interpret company activity, profitability, liquidity and solvency through selection and application of appropriate financial analysis tools.



We are considering increasing coverage of the cash flow statement in chapter 1 and/or introducing the indirect method of cash flows in chapter 6. In terms of the contextual interpretation of ratios, additional questions may be added on the electronic exercises to help students understand how the various ratios fit together.  Alternatively, additional feedback may be provided on annual report assignments (early in the semester to help students prepare for the report).  The common final was adjusted Fall 2015 to better reflect various SLO’s and further incorporate a Financial Statements.


 

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (OSLED Departments)

			College			Program
Indicator	Source	2013-2014 Performance	Standard	Five Year Goal	Fall 2014 Performance	Standard	Five Year Goal
Course Success
-          Overall	PDR	71.1%	70%	73%
-          Transfer/GE	PDR	71.5%		73%	Econ: 71.8%	Econ: 65%	Econ: 72%
-          CTE	PDR	75%		77%	Acct:  60.4% Bus: 63% RLS: 73.6%	Acct:  60%    Bus: 60% RLS: 72%	Acct:  60% Bus: 63% RLS: 74%
-          Basic Skills	PDR	51.7%		55%
-          Distance Ed (all)	PDR	62.5%		64%
Persistence (Focused).  Note:  The Persistence (Focused) that is included in the PDR is a different indicator than the three-primary term persistence indicator, from the state Student Success Scorecard, that is used to measure institutional persistence.  The Focused Persistence indicator measures the percentage of students that took a second course in a discipline within one year. There is no relationship between the college and program standards in this area.	PDR	72.6%    (Three-Term) Scorecard	67% (Three-Term) Scorecard	75% (Three-Term) Scorecard	Acct: 48.7% Bus: 34.4% Econ: 36.8% RLS: 36%	Acct: 45% Bus: 34.4% Econ: 25% RLS: 36%	Acct: 49% Bus: 34.4% Econ: 37% RLS: 36%
Degrees	PDR	1,455		1,600	Acct: 24 Bus:   AA/AS: 60   AA-AS-T: 54 RLS: 2	Acct: 20 Bus: 70 RLS: 1	Acct: 24 Bus: 114 RLS: 4
Certificates	PDR	366		475	Acct:    CA: 25    CC: 34 Bus:    CA: 2    CC: 4 RLS:     CA: 2    CC: 3	Acct:    CA: 15    CC: 25 Bus:    CA: 1    CC: 2 RLS:     CA: 1    CC: 1	Acct:    CA: 25    CC: 34 Bus:   CA: 2   CC: 4 RLS:     CA: 2    CC: 3
Developmental Strand Completion
-          English	State	42%		45%
-          Math	State	30.7%		33%
-          ESL	State	25%		28%
Licensure Pass Rates
-
-
Job Placement Rates	PIV	Acct: 88% Bus Adm: 64% Bus Mgt: 81%	Acct: 70% Bus Adm: 60% Bus Mgt: 55%	Acct: 85% Bus Adm: 65% Bus Mgt: 80%

                                                                                The business department continues to support student achievement by focusing on quality instruction.  Departmental and individual efforts are focused on making class material as accessible and engaging as possible and thereby improving student performance and opportunities.   Four issues are particularly noteworthy in regard to student achievement: Accounting – success rates have declined from 66.8% to 60.4% over the past four years.  This drop is likely the result of losing a full-time instructor over that time period.  Patrick went to half load as chair and Karen Taylor was on and off medical leave before retiring. Economics – success rates are up from 70.5% to 71.8% over the past four years.  Focused persistence is up from 27.9% to 36.8% over the past four years.  Students are taking more subsequent economics courses. Business – Degree production is up from 80 to 114 over the past four years.  This is probably due to the new transfer degree in this area. Approximately 1,000 students have chosen a Business degree or certificate as their academic program.  Many students uncertain of their career aspirations declare a business major. Real Estate – Success rates are down from 81.2% to 73.6% over the past four years.  Focused persistence is down from 40% to 36% over the same period.  Students are taking fewer subsequent Real Estate Courses.  The drop in these rates is likely due to the continued weakness in the real estate market as well as the loss of long-time real estate instructor Thurza Andrews.  The loss of Thurza has required some adjustments to our staffing. Hopefully, these adjustments will improve the quality of instruction and persistence rates going forward.  

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (All Other Departments)

Strategic Direction

The business education department’s greatest contribution to the strategic direction of the college is to remain focused on quality instruction.  The school exists to help students learn and develop themselves.  The most important factor for student success (besides student effort) is instructor engagement and quality of instruction.  The less administrative tasks we impose upon instructors the better able they are to make changes to improve student experience.  However, the business education department has made unique efforts to improve student equity, student learning outcomes, and student completion.    
Steve Price has piloted a student equity program where he coaches under performing groups of students (foster students, veterans, Latinos, Native Americans, African-Americans, etc.).  The first semester he focused on students with the same instructor and class (Financial Accounting with LaRee Hartman).  He offered to meet with all students that were enrolled in Ms. Hartman’s classes and a member an underperforming population.  In the short-term, these meetings were designed to establish trust and a connection with a faculty member on campus.  As a relationship was developed then Mr. Price would make referrals to various services on campus and encourage students to succeed.  The initial results appear to support this program as students Mr. Price met with showed a greater success rate than their peers.  Financial accounting showed improvement in every "dashboard" subgroup.  With administration's support, Mr. Price hopes to expand the program to the entire business education department.
To improve student learning outcome assessment objectives, the business education department implemented a regular reporting cycle within each discipline (business, accounting, economics, and real estate).  All faculty members now show the student learning objectives that apply to each graded item on the grade justification sheet.  Faculty members also continue to complete course level and program level SLO reporting.
To further improve student completion rates, the general business (BUS) program standardized the core business skills classes required across general business certificates and degrees (business management, entrepreneurship, marketing, retail management).  All business certificates and degrees now require the same 7-8 core skills courses and the catalog now lists classes in order of intended sequence to encourage students to start with the most fundamental classes (Introduction to Business, Business Communications, Public Speaking).  When students start with these classes they are much more likely to succeed in subsequent classes. The changes are intended to accomplish the following:

Improve student course success, focus persistence, certificate and degree completion
Simplify certificate and degree pathways in business management, marketing, entrepreneurship, and retail management
Simplify students course selection
Simplify faculty advising so that students find a faculty knowledgeable on our pathways in every class
Reduce courses taken that don't apply toward a certificate or degree
Facilitate students switching between pathways without loss of progress 

Program Review

To follow are the program review recommendations and a status update on each:
 1)      Hire a new full-time general business instructor and another economics instructor.

We hired a new general business instructor, but continue to request an additional economics instructor.

 2)      Investigate why catalog no longer shows recommended sequence of study for each business major. 

Certificates and degrees requirements are now listed in recommended sequence of study.  The new educational planning module the school is working to implement will further highlight recommended sequence of study.   

 3)      Avoid scheduling classes that straddle two widely used timeslots which could lock students out of other classes.

The two hour “block” accounting classes and need to squeeze in as many classes as possible during prime time make occasional straddling of time slots unavoidable. 

4)      The women’s restroom in the BE building is unsafe and must be repaired and updated immediately!

Remodeling was completed over Summer 2015.  Hooray!!

5)      The door on the men’s restroom opens into the hallway; this is unsafe. This safety issue needs to be fixed ASAP!

Facilities has been notified of the issue.

6)      BE rooms 105 a, b, c are small, overcrowded & not well ventilated. Student seating is not conducive to efficient group work. It is recommended that seating be re-arranged and to not schedule classes that incorporate group work into BE 105 a, b or c.

Seating could only be changed if instructors are willing to lose board space or reduce the number of seats.  Since instructors want maximize enrollment and accounting and economics classes require lots of board space, no changes have been made yet to seating arrangement.  However, facilities has been notified of the issues with ventilation.

7)      Staff and associate faculty morale survey is recommended to fully incorporate their input into unit planning and program review processes.

Associate faculty input is solicited on institute night and throughout the semester as instructors see one another.   A formal survey hasn’t been implemented in part due to time constraints (the chair is on double-overload and had a hiring and evaluation nightmares Fall semester).  The department is also leery of soliciting input when it isn’t sure it has the power or will to make requested changes. 

For instance, part-timers would likely want schedules that were more convenient to them (but which would make it difficult or impossible to staff all sections at the times students prefer).  Part-timers would also want to choose their own books rather than using a common textbook across sections.  While this would allow individual instructors preferred textbooks, the low volume would increase textbook costs, the different textbooks would make ordering more time consuming to the bookstore, and the different textbooks be less conducive to consistency and rigor across class sections.  Perhaps a survey will be administered next year, but our fear is that requesting input and then not acting upon that input is more detrimental to morale than to have never
 8)      Untapped potential exists for enrollment growth in the department. Modest growth in the number of Introduction to Business courses and in Economics is merited. The college and department should also collaborate with Chico State to move Business Law to lower division as is common practice.

Staffing economics sections has been extremely difficult.  Two instructors were let go this semester because of ongoing instructional quality issues and Steve Price has been involved in the student equity project.  It has been very difficult to hire part-time instructors to replace these sections.  After too many hours on the phone, Linkedin and surfing the internet looking for qualified instructors, we were able to staff Spring 2016 schedule.  To grow the enrollments we would need another full-time instructor or more part-time instructors available during peak hours.
A new online Introduction to Business (Bus 20) section was added Fall 2016.  We also added a couple Bus 20 and Bus 8 sections over the last couple years.  The online Bus 20 class is expected to be in high demand.
We continue to work with Chico State regarding moving business law to a lower division class.  While this hasn’t happened yet, CSUC does now accept Butte’s Bus 8 from students earning the AS-T degree in place of its upper division business law class.

 9)      Increase in Real Estate offerings may now be appropriate as well. To accomplish such growth, however, expansion of the faculty and possibly facilities will be necessary, as addressed elsewhere in these recommendations.

With Thurza Andrew’s death, different instructors have begun teaching the real estate classes and this has required some adjustments.  Hopefully, as the real estate sector improves and demand will increase for real estate classes.

 10)   Continued discussion needs to occur between disciplines that require the same courses for students to obtain a certificate or degree. It is evident that disciplines differ in the amount of time they may feel they need to focus on specific content. So, a determination should be made related to the required unit value of specific courses such as Excel.

The BCIS Department created a one unit Excel for Business class that allows accounting students to gain exposure to the Excel without requiring them to take the regular three unit Excel class.  

 11)   Currently there do not appear to be any courses within any of the business programs that articulate with the high schools in the surrounding areas. The expectation is not for the department to accept agreements that don’t benefit students, but rather look into why agreements have not been renewed and pursue those discussions with high schools in an effort to offer agreements that do benefit students.

We have contacted Delia Buzatu who is responsible for articulation with local high schools and expressed our interest in articulating high school accounting classes for our Introduction to Accounting (Acct 20) class.  She speculated that some vocational education programs were defunded during the worst of the California budget crisis and so a number of these classes were dropped.  The department remains open to articulating classes with equivalent subject matter.  Currently, we are discussing the articulation of a personal finance class from Lassen High School.  

Department Goals

Focus department and instructor resources on providing an outstanding education in the most convenient and efficient manner possible.  The college exists to educate and empower students.  Accordingly, instructor time and energies should be focused on teaching.  The department will support instructors as they work to improve lesson plans, stay current in their fields of expertise, find better examples to explain key concepts, and make class more fun and engaging.  Strong teaching leads to student success and a strong reputation for the department which over the long-term leads to enrollment growth. 

Future Development Strategies

Requested Non-Financial Resources

Current Financial Resources

Augmentation Requests

Original Priority	Program, Unit, Area	Resource Type	Account Number	Object Code	One Time Augment	Ongoing Augment
Description	Supporting Rationale		Potential Alternative Funding Sources		Prioritization Criteria
1	Business Education, Accounting	Personnel	11-000-513-1-059900	51100	$0.00	$99,187.00
Complete Hiring Process for Accounting Instructor	Already approved in faculty prioritization process.				Maintaining core programs and services Addressing a shortfall identified during Student Learning (or administrative unit) Outcomes Assessment Directly supporting meeting department standards/goals for student achievement and/or supporting the college in meeting its student achievement standards and/or goals Placing students appropriately, advising them effectively, and ensuring that they have educational plans Reaching the Sustainable Continuous Quality Improvement level on the implementation of Student Learning Outcomes Evaluating standards and goals for course success, retention, degree achievement, certificate completion, transfer, and credentialing annually Using data, research and collaborative efforts among divisions and departments to develop projections of student demand, or appropriate course offerings, locations, and modalities Supports Previous Program Review Recommendations
2	Replace instructor laptop	Equipment			$2,000.00	$0.00
Replace Patrick's 6 year old laptop	Laptop is 6 years old and has significant issues (lag, inability to type at times, depleted battery). A properly functioning computer is necessary to provide students a quality education in the 21st century. The cornerstone of quality teaching is communication. Without a properly functioning computer, I can't interact well with students, faculty, or administration. An up to date computer is a necessity for communicating in the 21st century.				Maintaining core programs and services Addressing a shortfall identified during Student Learning (or administrative unit) Outcomes Assessment Directly supporting meeting department standards/goals for student achievement and/or supporting the college in meeting its student achievement standards and/or goals Supports Previous Program Review Recommendations Evaluating standards and goals for course success, retention, degree achievement, certificate completion, transfer, and credentialing annually Using data, research and collaborative efforts among divisions and departments to develop projections of student demand, or appropriate course offerings, locations, and modalities Improving access, success, and completion of targeted student populations through the implementation of the Student Equity Plan