Mission Statement

Housed in the Sociocultural Studies Department, Geography promotes student success, completion and transfer, and seeks to create lifelong learners who understand and appreciate the significance of culture and human interaction with the physical environment as a major factor in their lives and health of the planet.

Program Description

The Geography program creates a transfer pathway for students who plan to complete a four-year degree at a California State University. Upon completion of an AA-T degree in Geography, students will possess the requisite foundational knowledge as well as the practical skills necessary for subsequent completion of the baccalaureate degree. Upon successful completion of the Geography program, the student will be able to:
1. Identify fundamental concepts specific to physical and cultural Geography.
2. Identify conceptual and theoretical models pertaining to world, regional, and local Geography.
3. Apply applications associated with various thematic maps as well as use of geographical computer modeling.

The AA-T degree in Geography is a recent development, listed for the first time in the 2013-2014 catalog.  No students have graduated from this program as of yet.

The courses that comprise the AA-T degree are also for Butte and transfer General Education.  With over 30 sections offered each school year, Geography serves a large number of students and meets an array of important General Education and transfer requirements.  Most Geography courses are dedicated to understanding culture process as they relate to the interaction with the physical environment. One course, Geography 2 Physical Geography, focuses on physical/natural phenomena.

Geography is one of five disciplines that comprise the Sociocultural Studies Department.  Currently, there is one full-time faculty in the discipline and six associate faculty.  In Spring 2015, sixty-seven percent of courses offered in Geography are being taught by associate faculty.

Student Learning/Administrative Unit Outcomes

Based upon a review of the Fall 2015 SLO Brief Reflections submitted with the Grade Justifications for the Geography courses, two related issues appear to be nearly unanimous amoung the faculty: 1) Majority of faculty pointed to missed assignments as a significant reason for poor student performance. 2) In addition, these same faculty members represented the issue concerning absenteeism as another reason for poor student performance.
Reflecting the issues above, the actions and recommendations related to these findings focus on both because of the relationship between missed assignments and missed classes by students. Discussion among faculty continues in an attempt to improve student attendance, through connecting during monthly department meetings and Institute Night twice a year.  One possible solution is currently being tested by a faculty member.  This member requires a lecture quiz after each lecture; the quizzes account for one-third of the total points for the class. One issue with this much testing is that it requires grading, which takes time, and takes additional time that many associate faculty do not have.

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%	69.6%	65%	73%
-          CTE	PDR	75%		77%
-          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	16.4%	12%	18%
Degrees	PDR	1,455		1,600			5
Certificates	PDR	366		475	0	0	3
Developmental Strand Completion
-          English	State	42%	35%	45%
-          Math	State	30.7%	25%	33%
-          ESL	State	25%		28%
Licensure Pass Rates
-          Registered Nursing	SC
-          Licensed Vocational Nursing	SC
-          Respiratory Therapy	SC
-          Paramedic	SC
-          Cosmetology	SC
-          Welding	SC
Job Placement Rates	PIV

                                             The Geography Department is in compliance with the standards.  1. Success rates for Geography are at the middle of the four year range (65.3% - 71.8%).    This data was presented to the Geography faculty at the latest Institute Night (Spring 2016), and was received with a great deal of surprise as to the relatively high level for the program. More importantly, how does the numbers fall out by course and instructor?  Geography offers at least six different courses each semester. Focusing on specific courses (as it relates to student success) would provide for a better opportunity for improvement to student success. The department is just below the college standard for Transfer/GE, and it is believed that if the Geography faculty can improve on the lack of student achievement concerning missed assignments and reduce absenteeism, that the GEOG department will not only meet the college’s five year goal of 73 percent, but perhaps surpass the college in this category. Course success rates will be further discussed at monthly department meetings and at Institute Night. 2. There is a new AA-T in Geography but no students have yet earned this degree.   There has been some change to this status. As of January 31, 2016, two students have attained an AA-T degree and there are now 11 declared majors in the program. In addition, Geography has begun to reach out to those individuals by identifying them through the use of the Reports Server. Also, those students who have been identified by taking two or more Geography courses, will be contacted and will be encouraged to attend events presented by the Butte College Geography department and Chico State Geography department, through the Chico State Geography and Planning Advisory Board.  Included in these efforts for recruitment will be the Geography department’s representation in the Sociocultural Department's (ANTH, HIST, POS) promotion events. 3.  The focused persistence for Geography is at the middle of its four year range (13.9% - 17.6%).  While an increase in the number of persistent students will increase as the number of Geography AA-T increase, increasing the success rates of all students within the Geography courses and sections should help elevate the number of students taking additional Geography courses.  It is also hoped that the return of GIS to the college curriculum will increase these numbers as well.  

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (All Other Departments)

Strategic Direction

Current efforts in the Geography program are classroom centered. Committed to excellence in the teaching of rich and rigorous course content, discipline faculty play a key role in supporting the college to meet this Strategic Direction:
Ensuring that programs provide students with intellectual and analytical skills to effectively contribute to society. (1.c.3)
To support these classroom efforts, in conjunction with ANTH, HIST, and POS faculty, instructors in Anthropology participated in the first two Sociocultural Studies Department Forums. The first forum was held in Spring 2015, and included presentations on Reading Strategies, Helping International Students Succeed, and Tried-and-Test Teaching Ideas. Held in Fall 2015, the second forum included presentations on Helping Student Athletes Succeed, No/Low Cost Textbooks, and Tried-and-Tested Teaching Ideas. Forum topics are "just-in-time" -- meant to help instructors with recent and/or ongoing teaching challenges. The next forum is scheduled for Fall 2016. The SCS Department Forum supports the college mission to meet this Strategic Direction:
Providing just-in-time and scheduled Professional Development opportunities. (2.b.1)
Finally, Geography's new certificate program in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) aligns with this part of the College's Strategic Direction:
Developing additional opportunities in response to community needs such as short-term certificates. (1.h.4)
Geospatial data is critically important to a broad range of employment categories, from health care to marketing, natural resource management to urban design, and climate science to engineering. The GIS certificate program prepares students to take the ArcGIS Desktop Associate certification exam. 

Program Review

1. The team encourages the Geography department to continue discussion and planning to reinstate the GIS program and courses. This program has broad applicability to a variety of CTE majors such as Fire Technology, Drafting, Administration of Justice, Agriculture, and is a support for majors at the CSU such as Engineering, Construction Management, Agriculture and Environmental Studies. 
By Spring 2016, four GIS courses and a certificate program were developed and approved by the Curriculum Committee.  In addition, another course closely aligned with the approved GIS courses is in development, bringing a total of 5 GIS related courses back to the college.
2. We recommend that serious consideration be given to hiring an additional full-time geographer, bringing the number of full-time faculty up to two. By historic standards, this would still be below the three full-time geographers teaching at Butte 15 years ago. A second full-time faculty is also necessary to implement our recommendation that the GIS program be restored. It is the committee’s considered judgment that a vibrant, up-to-date GIS program, providing professional courses for other CTE degrees and a standalone certificate of completion, cannot be developed, maintained, and taught without significant full-time involvement and oversight from a professional geographer. 
Geography is still in need of another full-time position and it is not only related to the GIS program as outlined above, but also to Recommendation #3.  More than half of the associate faculty teaching geography are retired individuals who may or may not be continuing to teach. This semester alone, one of the associate faculty in this category requested fewer sections for medical reasons, and another will be taking medical leave. Second, the associate faculty hiring pool was frequently filled by CSU Chico master’s program graduates; however, the CSU Chico geography department no longer maintains a master’s program. The Butte College hiring pool for geography is virtually nonexistent at this time. Qualified individuals have been siphoned off by CSU Chico, and others are not enticed to relocate to the area for only a part time teaching position. Finally, the expansion of geography into GIS courses will place further strain on the limited faculty members in this department. The geography department’s latest program review recommended that an additional full-time faculty position be funded to allow the department to focus on GIS.
3. The team recommends that the department consider closely aligning instruction in Geography 3 (Physical Geography Lab) with instruction in Geography 2 (Physical Geography) so that the courses are complementary and that students who take the courses concurrently have a consistent learning experience.
The department would like to be able to align Geography 2 and Geography 3, as it would be most beneficial to the student, but it would also better align Butte College with Chico State and other CSUs in the system. But this would really require another full-time position and a dedicated space because the current room is not set up for labs. A full-time instructor is needed because of the time and pay differences between full-time and part-time.

Department Goals

Geography has identified the following goals for the 2016-2017 academic year -

Increase student achievement of the course SLOs and overall success in the classroom by focusing on improving on-time assignment completion and reduce absenteeism.
Identify opportunities to improve students success rates so that they align or exceed the college’s rate and 5-year goal.
Develop and sustain a well-defined program to guide and support students who have declared or who are considering a major in Geography. These efforts will be informed by regular tracking of students who have completed the Geography program and by eliciting help from the Chico State Geography and Planning Advisory Board.
Provide for GIS Course Development by funding campus-wide GIS software, to be used by multiple disciplines and departments at Butte College, and a full-time instructor for the GIS program.
 

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	GEOG, SCS	Equipment			$0.00	$2,000.00
GIS Software	Geospatial data is critically important to a broad range of employment categories, from health care to marketing, natural resource management to urban design, and climate science to engineering, and GIS is critical to this rapidly expanding field. The California Community College Foundation currently offers an annual license agreement for ESRI ArcGIS 10.3 software that provides unlimited seats on campus, virtual campus tutorials through ESRI (which are utilized by our proposed GIS courses), a one-year academic license of the software for each student enrolled in GIS classes (a $1,500 value in itself), and one instructor pass to the ESRI Users Conference (a $1,200 value) that is held annually and attracts 15,000 GIS users from around the world. The license agreement would also benefit Natural Resources where a GIS related course is now offered one semester per year requiring an annual maintenance fee of $500 for 32 seats. One-time license fee: $2,000; subsequent licensing covered by materials fee.		Technology Fee		Directly supporting meeting department standards/goals for student achievement and/or supporting the college in meeting its student achievement standards and/or goals 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