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 trains students to effectively record, analyze and utilize financial data.  We teach them marketable accounting skills, enhance their probability of success in any business profession, and prepare them to move forward towards completing their business education goals. 
�  The General Business Program prepares students to be successful as they enter and pursue careers in business fields such as small business management, marketing, and human resources, 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 four 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 Transfer Program also offers and A.S.-T degree in Economics.
�      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; Marketing Certificate of Achievement; 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 2 options:  Business Management and Small Business/Entrepreneurship) 
�  Marketing 
�  Real Estate.

Student Learning/Administrative Unit Outcomes

Since the SLO reports are found on the Butte SLO webpage and the link is included, it seems redundant to put the SLO's for the department here again.
In essence, our full department faculty meets during the Institute Night department meeting twice a year to discuss the SLO reflections from the prior semester. We discuss our findings/concerns and have a discussion by area, and sometimges as a whole.  We discuss and elaborate on ways to teach in a more inclusive manner. We look at the SLO's for our courses, the PLO's as well and discuss ways to improve our instruction. We regularly choose specific SLO's from courses to reflect on and discuss. We have also discussed SLO's for the department as a whole, with discussion on best teaching practices, and how to reach students. Our department is collaborative and thoughtful and dedicated to student learning.

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (Instruction Departments)

Our program demand has been decreasing due to decreasing enrollments overall at the school. From 2015 to 2019 we have seen a decrease of 8.65%, 3.51%, 5.8% and 3.37%. While year by year this does not look significant, it is concerning that it reflects an overall 19.7% drop over this period of time. This will be further impacted in 2020 – 2021 due to the unusual external influences due to Covid 19 and moving all classes online.
We also have little to no real advertising for our program and courses which impacts our enrollments. Butte College advertises for the school at large and a few highlighted programs, but our program rarely makes the cut. 
 

 
We have had discussions with our Dean, Teresa Doyle and with Brian Murphy, Director of Institutional Research, regarding the calculation of success rates. The current calculation is the number of students passing a course with a C or better divided by the number of students at initial census date. Most instructors would not agree with this calculation. Most instructors, including those in this department, believe the calculation should be the number of students passing a course with a C or better divided by the number of students at the end of the semester. By using the first calculation, the success rate is holding the instructor/department responsible for those students that drop or withdraw from the course, which the instructors/department have little to no control over. Students drop for a variety of reasons such as illness, new job, moving, etc. This rate is also impacted by classes size since one or two students dropping in a small class has a significantly larger impact than one or two students leaving a larger class. This means this can impact CTE classes unfairly since they typically have smaller class sizes or classes with a lower ped caps. It gives advantages to those departments that start with large numbers of students in courses. It also has a negative impact to those departments that have online courses. Since online courses have a larger drop/withdraw rate since students sign up to “try” online and then drop, these drops negatively impact the success rates of the department. In looking at our success numbers for the last few years, it shows the variance in the two ways to calculate success runs between 5%-17% which is significant when considering success. One possible outcome of this current calculation is it could lead to the conclusion that you should not have many online courses. This is the opposite of the direction from administration and their desire for more online courses.

Our awards are relatively stable with an averge of 210 per year and are just lightly better than average in 2019. Again - awards can be impacted by our fall in students.
All our major awards are declining except for the AS-T degree. Students are being encouraged towards the AS-T and its emphasis to have students complete in 4 years. We are planning to create AS-T+ certificates to help combat the cannibalization of limited courses in AS-T degree, and to encourage our students towards our career AS degrees as well. We also intend to implement a marketing plan for our department and communicate this to all BE instructors as well as Counselors and Job Placement  to encourage students to increase their skills at Butte before moving on to their 4 year school.

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (All Other Departments)

n/a

Strategic Direction

Enhancing a Culture of Completion and Goal Achievement - Business Education does this by:
We are in the midst of the Covid19 epidemic. We have taken our courses to remote instruction this spring and the college is currently creating training for distance education for the summer and fall semesters. This has created a tremendous amount of additional work learning new programs and adjusting to online instruction for all our faculty members. We would like to thank our entire faculty for the hard work reaching out to students and keeping them engaged in their classes during this extreme event. A particular shout out to the associate faculty for their endurance and commitment to our students; for learning new instructional methods, taking on time consuming additional workload for which instructors (that often had numerous preps) were paid next to nothing.
For guided pathways and SLO’s, the Business Education department led the way and piloted both programs before they were made permanent for the rest of the college. These pathways and maps are available on our website and promoted within our department. 
 
Supporting Student, Faculty, and Staff Success - Business Education does this by:
Student success is heavily dependent on collaboration at Butte College.  For example, our online courses require collaboration between the department instructor, the TMI department for training, the media department for videos, the California Community College Confer service for captioning and storing online resources and the Center for Academic Success and Library personnel who assist with exam proctoring.
Our instructors regularly collaborate with DSPS, Veterans Services, EOPS, Safe Place, the Medical Center and Academic Counseling when we see that a student would benefit from these services.  We have access to handy guides with key contact information and summaries of services to be ready to support students.
We are also currently collaborating with BCIS to create a new Certificate of achievement in Project Management. BCIS is creating a new MS Project/Outlook course to go with our new certificate which we hope will be available in Fall 2021.

Program Review

The number one recommendation from our Program review is to replace fulltime faculty. Although it is clear this will not occur this year due to low enrollments, it is imperative this remains a focus for administration and this department.
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 and we are requesting these rooms be romodeled.

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. We are exploring alternative desk/chair combinations (used at Chico State) to make the seating more conducive to group work. Facilities has been notified of the issues with ventilation.
We are recommending that BE 105 A, B, and C be remodeled into only 2 large rooms similar to BE 111/BE120. This would allow for better social distancing of students and would address/improve the heating/cooling issues. 

Department Goals

1) Replace full-time faculty which is our focus on teaching
2) Have our department marketed with a social marketing expert to drive up FTES; work to increase FTES not just decrease classes and faculty
3) Reconfigure BE 105 A-B created for social distancing and buy active learning seating. Make this space more efficient and safe.
4) Review and revision of the chair responsibilities, compensation, and training. 
5) Request consideration of Ag business courses being returned to Business Education which would save the college money and potentially resources. We are one of the only departments on campus with inter-college competition to what we teach. We complete with the SBDC, the Training Place, and the Ag dept which teaches Business courses as well. We would like these business courses returned to our dept where they belong.

Future Development Strategies

Requested Non-Financial Resources

Current Financial Resources