Mission Statement

The Butte College English Department focuses on teaching critical reading, thinking, analysis, and writing to better prepare our students for success in college, work, and life.

Program Description

We are a department that cultivates the humanities by encouraging the exploration of what it means to be human and by celebrating the beauty of language and creative expression. The English Department�s primary focus is teaching transfer-level composition and preparing the "now student" to successfully employ current literacy practices, especially digital literacies, in the remainder of their academic pathway and as they continue into their profession. As such, our department�s revised composition structure directly impacts student equity. At the same time, we serve the institution and surrounding communities by promoting literature and learning through our course offerings and programs like Journalism, Word Spring and the Book in Common. Finally, we offer Honors courses and are actively building an online program through a community of practice and an embedded IA pilot. These combined departmental programs make significant contributions to enrollment growth and improvement in student outcomes and student equity.
We strongly believe that the move to comply with AB705 by offering all students transfer-level English, including transfer-level English with additional support (English 3) will improve our English completion rates overall, and we're trying to make changes to our pedagogy that will better ensure their success, especially by focusing more on student metacognition of their own and other possible literacy practices, including academic literacies  they will encounter in college, and empowering them to successfully appropriate these practices and see the transferability in the literacy practices that may feel more comfortable and natural to them.  We are also placing more emphasis on the value and success of individual conferencing with the instructor for students who might need extra help to feel comfortable with academic literacy practices, and as such, we need to ensure student access to faculty outside of class. 

In all, we are an energetic and hard-working department dedicated to improving our program for students' sake. We are also in transition. Due to AB 705, the once thriving LEAD department has merged with the English department. Both departments have different cultures. Faculty are struggling to form a new identity as a shared department. This transition will take time and collective effort.

Student Learning/Administrative Unit Outcomes

For Spring 19-Spring 20, the department SLO work revolved around the SLO on the writing process, with special attention to revision and editing. From our Fall 2019 SLO Department Report our Findings were: Students struggle with revision and editing requirements and self-identify as procrastinators and not taking assignments seriously. Evaluation of student work demonstrated that students: did not take the revision process seriously; did not proofread; revealed a disconnect between recognizing writing errors in another’s work and their own; and, do not understand the difference between revision and proofreading. Our instructional strategies included: 1) Increased scaffolding (Intentional strategies ranged from pre-writing outlines and homework, to personalized editing plans and revisions guided by purpose/audience to use of portfolios.);  2) Incentives for pre-writing and editing. (Strategies ranged from required revisions/drafts/prewriting homework to extra credit for attending CAS workshops or tutoring sessions.) 3) Increased in-class activities/instruction. (Strategies ranged from peer-review, reverse outlines and collaborative pre-writing/planning/prompt development to having students read their work aloud, their own and the work of peers Instructional units on the difference between editing, proofreading and revising.) 4) Utilization of resources such as time to conference, embedded librarian in an online section, and required net tutor submissions to use of computer labs.  Of note, instructors identify consistent computer access as the most valuable resource: especially regarding the revision process. It would be helpful to have consistent computer access in the classrooms, for many reasons which include, but are not limited to: 1)ease of sharing work with classmates; 2)ease of students reading and understanding others’ comments; and, 3) ease of using the web to fact-check, find alternative points of views, and access other resources involved with the writing process. 

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (Instruction Departments)

English - English classes consistently have a high retention rate. While the cause of success rates are difficult to pinpoint, 2015 does correspond with second cohort of instructors trained in Acceleration Pedagogy. Our robust in-house training program has continued since 2014. In addition, in that time, we have hired 5 new full-time faculty.
 

Journalism - We continue to face difficulty finding faculty willing to take on teaching Journalism 2, the newspaper productions courses, JOUR 10 and 12, and fulfilling the advisor duties below for the compensation we offer them.  In Spring 2019, one of our full-time instructors took charge of the program, but it's pretty certain that he won't be able to continue doing so in the 2020/2021 academic year, so we need a long-term strategy to ensure the vitality of our journalism program, and finding a full-time hire in that area would be crucial to achieving the goal of increasing AA-Ts in Journalism on our campus.
 
Degree Confered for English: Degree Confered for English: We continue to provide rigorous transfer-focused instruction in writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking and communicating through our English 2, which is required for an AA or for transfer. Our English 11 meets the Critical Thinking (CSU A3) GE Requirement for transfer.  The literature courses that meet the degree requirements are always taught by full-time faculty.
Degree confered in Journalism: We continue to face difficulty finding faculty willing to take on teaching Journalism 2, the newspaper productions courses, JOUR 10 and 12, and fulfilling the advisor duties below for the compensation we offer them.  In Spring 2019, one of our full-time instructors took charge of the program, but it's pretty certain that he won't be able to continue doing so in the 2020/2021 academic year, so we need a long-term strategy to ensure the vitality of our journalism program, and finding a full-time hire in that area would be crucial to achieving the goal of increasing AA-Ts in Journalism on our campus.
 
 
 
 
 

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (All Other Departments)

Strategic Direction

The English/Journalism Departmen support the college in meeting Priority Themes by:

Implementing Guided Pathways: English 2/3 features in almost every "cohort of classes" in the COIs. 
Meeting enrollment targets: We have increased the number of online sections/courses, piloted hybrid models and increased offerings at the Glenn Centers. In Summer 19, we added one English 2 section and doubled our English 11 sections, including piloting two online English 11s and one English 6. In Fall 19 we reduced the English 2 sections by one, doubled the online offerings (from 4 in F18 to 8), and added 15 sections of transfer-level English 3. 
Fostering a Culture of Inclusiveness: Besides course offerings, the English Department supports and promotes the literary arts by making provocative, diverse, and renowned writers available to students and the community at least twice per year.  We also offer a "Queer Film and Lit" course each semester. Our instructors are leaders in the FAIR Classroom program and many of our associate faculty have completed the FAIR research. Two of our instructors completed the HSI serving professional development institute, and one earned her certificate in teaching and learning in an HSI. In addition, our in-house professional development programs feature culturally responsive pedagogy. One instructor created and maintains the Butte College UDL resource site and offers professional development training for our faculty.

Program Review

Recommendation #1: Hire more full-time instructors We have a disproportionately high number of associate faculty, which creates substantial challenges for staffing, training, and maintaining consistency among sections and represents an unprecedented imbalance compared to other disciplines. It is the preeminent issue for the English and Journalism department.
Recommendation #2: Offer more professional development for consistency. We continue to incentive associate faculty by providing stipends, sponsoring conferences and offering in-house training. We have had an ongoing community of practice for over six years, actively promote individual inquiry projects, including projects designed around our annual book in common. However, AB705 has created new challenges for instructors and new needs for professional development.
Recommendation #3: Develop additional support strategies, particularly for students of color where data indicate lower achievement. While the efforts described below offered positive gains in student success rates, our English 3 pilot revealed equity gaps for students of color. AB705 is requiring more work in this area. 1. We are providing access to technology and updating pedagogy and instructional practices to support digital literacy in transfer-level composition. 2. As a follow-up to our work with Teaching Men of Color in the Community College, we adopted Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain as the department’s book in common. Discussion of this book has taken place in AB705 Implementation meetings, department meetings, and a Flex Discussion series. In addition, four instructors are currently conducting inquiry projects around teaching principles suggested in the book and will be presenting to the department at the end of the semester. 3. We incorporated CUE research recommendations throughout our process to better achieve equity in hiring for our department and in communication with HR and other departments on campus. 4. Two of our instructors completed a twenty-seven hour leadership course on culturally responsive teaching and the implementation of equity practices in the classroom. One of the two completed her certificate in teaching and learning in Hispanic Serving Institutions.
Recommendation #5 and Response: All composition instructors should emphasize the development of critical reading skills in their courses.  Our department has made major accomplishments and targeted improvement in this area so that MOST instructors emphasize the development of critical reading skills. However, the disproportionately high number of associate faculty prevents the department from meeting the requirement that ALL instructors adopt a practice.
Recommendation #11: The department should pursue pedagogical cap adjustments where research demonstrates a need for such change. 1. Despite our best efforts, the pedagogical cap for our co-requisite course was set at 30.  We will continue to pursue a lower ped. cap in that course and IA support, especially if it ends up replacing all below-transfer options as suggested in the language of AB 705. 2. We continue our attempts to communicate why, especially in transfer-level composition, getting thirty students to meet the objectives for that course in one semester of a 3 unit course is not possible.  The recommended pedagogical cap for all composition courses, put forth by the WPA is 17.  Because feedback in a composition course has to be consistent, formative, and in-depth for students to truly improve, this requires a great deal of additional work per student in these courses and should be taken into account when approving ped. caps for these courses, especially for those student populations who might need additional support.

Department Goals

Increase success rates in English 2 and Englilsh 3 as part of the AB 705 implementation, guided pathways completion agenda, and strategic initiative to close equity gaps on our campus.
Increase the number of English and Journalism AA-Ts as part of the guided pathways completion agenda.
Strengthen the culture of professional development by using in-housing training, individual inquiry projects, culturally responsive teaching and communities of practice to decrease equity gaps and increase student success in transfer-level composition.
Recruit, train and support highly-skilled associate faculty.
Reshape the English departmet to create a shared culture by improving collaborative interactions between former LEAD faculty and existing English faculty.

Future Development Strategies

Requested Non-Financial Resources

Current Financial Resources

Augmentation Requests