Mission Statement

LEAD Department (Writing, Reading & ESL) courses are designed to give students the strategies and practice necessary to improve their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, the skills essential for students to successfully reach their academic, vocational, or life goals. 

Program Description

The LEAD Department supports Butte College’s mission by promoting life-long learning through the acquisition of basic skills. LEAD classes serve as an important bridge to academic or vocational programs for non-credit ESL and ABE students and our courses prepare students for college reading and writing. As an open access institution, Butte College welcomes all students; the LEAD program supports a variety on non-traditional students and underperforming students as they begin their journeys into higher education. 

The LEAD program is comprised of three developmental disciplines: Reading, English as a Second Language (ESL), and Writing. Our 200-level courses are offered Pass/No Pass. Courses with a 300-level designation are non-credit, adult education courses. Courses are offered at a variety of locations/modalities: Main Campus, Glenn County, and in Chico at the Chico Center and the Skyway Center, and online. The department also offers courses in Education and American Sign Language. 


ESL - Our ESL program currently offers four levels of English as a Second Language classes from Survival Life Skills to Level III, Citizenship. We also offer an ESL Workforce training class as part of the Early Childhood Education program. Each semester we offer an ESL Digital Cafe or an ESL Conversation Cafe.

Reading - We offer developmental and transfer level reading courses to support students as they develop critical reading for success in college or career. Our courses include transfer level Speed Reading and three levels below transfer, Level I, Level II, and Reading for College Success. We also offer READ 126, College Study Skills, as an FYE option. Three of our reading classes are available online.
	
Writing - The majority of our writing sections are ENGL 118, an accelerated writing course we coordinate and co-teach with the English department. In addition, we offer three 200-level writing courses. In our writing classes students use writing for inquiry, learning, thinking and communicating. Students engage in a wide variety of writing tasks designed to focus on the choices they make for different audiences and purposes. Many of our classes act as an introduction to college. Our classes are situated part of the time in computer labs where students learn about and use campus resources and develop digital and information literacy through contextualized learning activities. 

SIGN - We have grown our American Sign Language courses from one per semester to five, plus one section during the summer. We currently offer SIGN I and SIGN II (soon to be ASL I and ASL II). We’ve recently developed a new ASL III and are developing ASL IV and a Deaf Culture class for a certificate in American Sign Language.
 
And more - We offer two EDUC courses, Tutoring Methods and GED Preparation. We also offer a Career Life Planning at the Oroville Day Reporting Center.  


Faculty - The department currently has 8 full-time instructors, but in May 2016, Carolyn Davidson will retire and Joe Abbott will have his workload reduced to 60%. The majority of our full-time load is currently dedicated other projects and assignments, not to LEAD instruction: Dr. Katherine MacKinnon has reassigned time serving on the union negotiating team, Student Success Committee co-chair and Innovations Award administrator and she is continuing her work developing a campus web resource on Universal Design. Teresa Ward has reassigned time as the FYE chair and Professional Development Coordinator, Suzanne Gripenstraw is serving as Interim Dean, Lisa Kekaha is at 60% as Interim Chair, and Nicole LaGrave regularly teaches 20% of her load in another department. Our Student Equity-funded ESL Program Facilitator, Tina Day, is full time, but is teaching 25% load and serving as program facilitator 75%. In 2015-16, 24 associate faculty members taught classes in our department. 

Our faculty serve outside our department in a wide range of capacities: Diversity Committee, Academic Senate, GE Committee, Accreditation, Faculty Flex, Professional Development Steering Committee, Non-Credit SSSP, Student Success Committee, Equity Planning Committee, Curriculum Committee, Union, Library Committee, Grant development, Ed Master Planning Committee, peer evaluators, multiple hiring committees and program reviews, MMAP and CAI Committee.  

Ongoing Departmental Work - (Enhancing a Culture of Completion and Academic Achievement, Supporting Student, Faculty and Staff Success, Using Data-Informed Processes for Continuous Improvement, Maximizing Resources to Support Student Learning, Enhancing a Culture of Inclusiveness)

 - LEAD Department Professional Development Workshops: Making Course Materials ADA Compliant Workshop, What's New with SLO Assessment, "LOFO" observation partnerships, the LEAD Institute (Student Equity teacher research project), LEAD Institute Teacher-Research Conference and Professional Development workshops.
 - Ongoing SLO assessment in all strands 
 - Acceleration Training for 118 instructors, including mentorships and portfolio grading sessions
 - New Faculty Mentorships
 - ESL Training for online testing
 - ESL Digital Cafe
 - ESL Conversation Cafe
 - ESL iPad training 
 - Applied Academics (Reading, Writing, Mathematics & Automotive Technology)   
 - VESL/CDF classes 
 - Collaboration with English - Acceleration training/scheduling, 118 task force, Oroville High School Project, ENGL 2 co-req planning team
 - Collaboration with Student Services 
Admissions & Records - ESL student registration 
Assessment/Orientation - ESL student orientation
Counseling - Counselor Class Visits
EOPS - EOPS Class Visits
Center for Academic Success - LEAD - Instructional Aide collaborations
Assessment - MMAP and CAI transitions

Student Learning/Administrative Unit Outcomes

We engage in regular assessment of student learning and intentional dialogue to improve outcomes. The most recent "deep dive" was done in SIGN 1 and SIGN SP15 and reported in FA15. Three faculty members assessed student across two levels on an objective that's similar in the two courses. 
Three instructors participated in the Childhood Memory Narrative assessment--two in SIGN I and one in SIGN II; however, one of the SIGN I instructors discarded his results and didn't participate in dialogue, so this report includes the work of two faculty members in two different courses. The objective is not exactly the same at each level, but instructors were able to create an assessment to measure the objectives in both courses. Instructors had students pick a childhood memory and create a narrative background, the story of what happened and a conclusion. Students were videotaped as they presented their narratives using ASL syntax, classifiers, role shifts, non-manual markers, and spatial features. Because the expectations are different for SIGN I and II, the instructors created rubrics appropriate for the two levels and used the rubrics to score students performance.
Faculty members were not in agreement about the effectiveness of this particular assessment. After dialogue, instructors realized the assessment, particularly use of narrative, may have been more appropriate for SIGN II because narrative structure is a bigger part of SIGN II. It would have been more appropriate to develop a different assessment for SIGN I. Still, doing the same assessment across two levels did yield good discussions and realizations. The SIGN I instructor thought her rubric wasn't adequate to assess the objective. The assessment served as an ‘umbrella’ for grammar, but the rubric did not break it down to represent some of the more specific grammatical features she would have liked to have tested for. Though students did well on the assessment, it took a lot of class time to teach the narrative structure, and there might have been a better way to assess the grammar without using a narrative.
In the future, SIGN instructors will revise the rubrics for each course. They will break down some of the criteria and make them more specific to the objective by including "sign articulation" and "adverb modification." They'll remove "cohesion" from the rubric because though it's an important element in narrative, it didn't measure the objective. In terms of instruction, they will continue to introduce narrative structure, but the modified rubric will allow them to focus more on the ASL syntax to be used in the narrative instead of the narrative structure.
The most important discussion and recommendation from this assessment will positively impact instructional time. In the past, demonstration assessments were done in the classroom, which takes valuable instructional time as each student is assessed one by one. For this assessment, SIGN instructors use the LMS to have students upload demonstration videos which can then be assessed outside of class time. In the future all SIGN instructor plan ot use the LMS more extensively to conduct demonstration assessments. Discussion of video demonstrations and dialogue about the logistics of in-class assessment led to this very important takeaway. SIGN faculty will need to complete Canvass training and work with TMI staff for extra support. They have talked about the possibility of having TMI provide training specific to their needs and circumstance. 
 

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%
-          CTE	PDR	75%		77%
-          Basic Skills	PDR	51.7%		55%	53.2%	52%	60%
-          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	22.4%	20%	30%
Degrees	PDR	1,455		1,600
Certificates	PDR	366		475
Developmental Strand Completion
-          English	State	42%	35%	45%
-          Math	State	30.7%		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 LEAD department is in compliance with the standard. The success rate for LEAD has dropped from 62.2% to 53.8%. Recent changes in assessment and placement, which put the highest-scoring students directly into transfer-level English classes rather than developmental levels, has doubled the number of students placing into the transfer level while leaving the more challenged students in Basic Skills. We also added our accelerated ENGL 118 in FA11 and have increased 118 offerings from two sections in FA11 to 22 sections in FA15. The students who choose the non-accelerated sequence tend to be students with less confidence and more non-cognitive challenges. We could speculate that course taking behavior – choosing an accelerated over non-accelerated sequence – also reflect higher confidence ability and college readiness. Concurrent declining enrollment in reading classes might suggest a correlation. Could struggle in writing be the result of unsupported reading difficulty? Of particular concern are drops in ENGL 217 from 71% to 54%. (Drops in ENGL 277 were even greater, but we are no longer offering this course and it will be deleted during Curriculum Review.) A Student Equity intervention was started in FA15, and our work will continue in SP 16. The LEAD Institute, a semester long project brought together reading, writing and ESL faculty to engage in teacher research focused on student equity. As teacher researchers we engaged in collaborative inquiry. We formed a community of practice to examine our own practice through an equity lens: we read and discussed local data, examined our own instruction, materials, policies and practices, and developed plans to improve outcomes for dashboard populations. Individually we developed questions and investigated them in our classrooms, the community provided feedback and in progress support, and then we shared our research with the department in a day long Teacher Research event. We will continue our Teacher Research Community of Practice again in spring. As part of our ongoing equity work, our community of practice will attend an all-day workshop by Asao Inoue on antiracist writing assessment. In advance of his visit, we'll read and discuss his book. Then we'll meet to develop practices to apply Inoue's ideas. Further, our March reading and writing meeting will be focused on retention best practices. The LEAD program has declined from 1,639 students to 621 students over the past four years and a move to using multiple measures in placement is predicted to reduce the number of students in our program even more as students’ high school GPA is used in placement. Clearly placing students with a high school GPA of 2.6 and higher into transfer level English will leave the very least likely to succeed in LEAD classes. Our department is working to redesign the developmental sequence from 4 levels below transfer to two levels below transfer. We would like to offer two accelerated courses below transfer. One would be our current ENGL 118 (which combines 219 and 119) and an accelerated ENGL 218 (combining 215 and 217). We will develop the new curriculum and take it through Curriculum Committee during summer-fall 2016. The proposed ENGL 218 will be an integrated reading/writing course like our 118. Because we anticipate this course will be populated by students placing lowest on the common assessment and students who also have high school GPAs of 2.5 at lower, we anticipate they will need a great deal of support. We plan to include embedded counseling and other student services support as a regular part of this class. We’ll also include Instructional Aides from the CAS in every section. We have not yet coordinated with counselors to discuss the feasibility, but since there will only be a few sections, we don’t anticipate a problem. Our department met with CAS IAs in January. They already support many of our LEAD classes, and Miya Squires liked the idea of designing the course to include embedded support so IA support is scheduled into every section offered. In order to sure accelerated ENGL 218 is focused and supports students differently and better than the 215-217 sequence, we will develop the curriculum and common assignments, provide training (similar to our successful 118 training model), and provide ongoing professional development and coordination with student services. We will need to staff the class with faculty dedicated to working with Butte’s most at-risk students.  It should be noted that a 200 level accelerated course will be challenging. Though we can’t predict demographics, it will likely serve higher numbers of disproportionately impacted groups. The LEAD Program will continue to advocate for the students who show up in higher numbers in Basic Skills classes: ESL, ABE, DSPS, foster youth, and low income. While Basic Skills students might not complete at the same rate as their more college-ready peers, it is part of our mission to serve them. LEAD course success is notably higher that progression success rate, so students are succeeding; they are less successful if we use completion as the only measure of success. The Butte College vision statement says "Butte College educationally, economically, and culturally empowers the communities we serve by helping students define and achieve success." We have an obligation to the communities we serve to support all students, even those who don’t progress at a standard pace. Education is not one size fits all. 

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (All Other Departments)

Strategic Direction

1.  Improving access, success, and completion of targeted student populations through the implementation of the Student Equity Plan. 
The LEAD department is working on five Student Equity interventions:

LEAD Institute - This semester long project brought together reading, writing and ESL faculty to engage in teacher research focused on student equity. As teacher researchers we engaged in collaborative inquiry. We formed a community of practice to examine our own practice through an equity lens: we read and discussed local data, examined our own instruction, materials, policies and practices, and developed plans to improve outcomes for dashboard populations. Individually we developed questions and investigated them in our classrooms, the community provided feedback and in progress support, and then we shared our research with the department in a day-long Teacher Research event. Our Teacher Research Community of Practice will continue to investigate equity in our classes this semester. Focus: improving success and completion


Asao Inoue Reading Group - Our community of practice will attend an all day workshop by Asao Inoue on antiracist writing assessment. In advance of his visit, we'll read and discuss his book. Then we'll meet to develop practices to apply Inoue's ideas. Focus: improving success and completion. 


ESL Instructor/Facilitator - Our new ESL facilitator is gathering data and assessing community and program needs. Because ESL non-credit students don't access student services, the college does not have accurate information on who ESL students are, why they're here or their goals in college. We don't have accurate information on English learners in the communities we serve. We don't have data but we know there is a serious equity gap in terms of access. ESL facilitator's roles as they address success and compleiton are detailed elsewhere in this plan. Focus: improving access, success and completion.


118 Insturctional Aides - LEAD and English faculty collaborated to write a proposal to provide embedded support in our accelerated ENGL 118 classes as we have in other LEAD classes. Focus: improving success and completion.


Oroville High Project - Four LEAD faculty members are participating in ongoing dialogue to improve high school student placement, align curriculum, support highschool students in the transition to college. The group is reading and discussing College Fear Factor, as a way to frame our discussions. Focus: improving success and completion.













2.  Collaborating effectively with K-12 to set appropriate student expectations, align curriculum, and prepare students for college success.

NCWP - Three LEAD faculty members participated in the Northern California Writing Project last summer. As part of this project, they worked with writing teachers from K-12 institutions across the north state. A natural outcome of this work is alignment of expectaitons and curriculum. Much of the focus in our work with high school teachers was on the Common Core and how new standards align with college curriculum and expectations.
Oroville High Project - Four LEAD faculty members are participating in ongoing dialogue to improve high school student placement, align curriculum, support highschool students in the transition to college. The group is reading and discussing College Fear Factor, as a way to frame our discussions. 
NCWP FIGs - Four LEAD faculty members have participated in two different Faculty Inquiry Groups focused on reading and writing. The FIGs were co-coordinated by a highschool teacher and university professor, which allowed the group to align from high school through transfer levels. 

3.  Providing effective electronically mediated communication (e.g. website, social media, marketing materials, wifi access).*
Our department is working with Monica Boyes to make the Butte college website and institutional processes more accessible to English Language Learners. We would like an ESL link right on the homepage, tutorials in Spanish and Hmong, translated application and other materials available for students. ESL students in particular need to be able to easily find support from our homepage. This work is ongoing.

Program Review

Our most recent Program Review was in 2011. A description of our progress on implication as well as actions to be addressed follows:

Three of the nine recommendations focus on the ESL strand of our program. In 2011 our only tenure track fulltime ESL instructor retired. Within a year, two long term grant-funded (fulltime) VESL instructors retired when grants ended. The number one program review recommendation was to hire a tenure-track ESL instructor and classified program assistant. Reviewers noted ESL associate faculty cannot provide the work and leadership necessary for the program’s success. Other ESL-related recommendations included providing professional development on ways to support ESL students across the disciplines and developing an ESL strand of higher level reading and writing courses. Both these recommendations were premised on the tenure-track ESL hire. In Spring 2016, Student Equity funding allowed us to hire a full time ESL Instructor/Program Facilitator for one year. Though we have started to meet this recommendation, we will not fully meet these recommendations until we institutionalize our SE funded position and ideally we hire another fulltime tenure-track ESL instructor devoted to vocational ESL. Community and program needs are large enough to need both positions to rebuild our ESL program. Our new ESL facilitator is addressing the other two ESL-related recommendations by working to provide support to all faculty and will be develop credit ESL courses once she’s done program and community needs assessments.
We have collected data on our accelerated ENGL 118 and have significantly increased the number of sections offered while reducing the the non-accelerated offerings.  
One recommendation was to explore different models for our integrated reading-writing course, ENGL/READ 277. We have not offered this course for the past year and a half. Because we’re in the process of redesigning our writing classes and will likely to include two accelerated integrated reading/writing courses (215/217 and 219/119) below transfer, we are not likely to offer 277 again.
One recommendation suggested the LEAD department expand our applied academic model to other disciplines, such as welding. We have worked with welding to develop this course, but applied academics are temporarily on hold. A significant shortage of Math faculty made applied academics auto difficult/impossible to schedule. We hope three new full-time faculty hires in Math will free up someone in Math to again teach applied academics courses.     
Four LEAD faculty are working on the Oroville High Project. Our work has included sharing assignments, objectives, rubrics, expectations, and approaches to find commonalities and identify gaps. Much of the dialogue has been on aligning Common Core and increasing placement of Oroville Unified School District students and easing their transition to college. The group meets regularly and this semester read and discuss College Fear Factor
We have not developed a hybrid ENGL 219. Stipends for developing hybrid courses were not available though stipends were available for developing fully online classes. We believe this inequity discouraged our mostly associate faculty from developing such a course. In FA15-SP16, we offered 35 sections of our Accelerated ENGL 118 and only 12 sections of ENGL 219; at this point, this recommendation seems more appropriate for ENGL 118.
We have advocated for more dedicated classroom space, but because our course offerings have been significantly reduced since the time of the program review, this recommendation is less necessary. We do need to continue to develop our computer lab schedule so students in each section of writing classes have equal access to computers, the Internet and library resources. Our writing courses do not teach computer literacy, but students gain literacy through focused exposure to resources and through assignments that allow them to gain literacy in contextualized activities.

Department Goals

Implement program review recommendations, build enrollment, develop curriculum, build internal and external relationships, provide workforce training, improve basic skills completion by hiring full-time ESL faculty to support and develop ESL program
Using Data Informed Processes for Continuous Improvement and Curriculum Development by redesigning our writing program to include integrated reading and writing courses and shortening sequence from four to two levels below transfer 
Develop Two-Year certificate in ASL
Stay up to date on CLR and faculty technology training
Promote Basic Skills through marketing
Department budget increase
 
 
 

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	LEAD, ESL	Personnel	11.000.614.1.493072	51100	$0.00	$99,187.00
ESL Full-time Instructor	The position will be a full-time instructor with a focus on providing leadership for the ESL program including shaping the program to meet community needs and providing leadership to the department and across campus for English Language Learners.		Student Equity		Maintaining core programs and services Supports Previous Program Review Recommendations Directly supporting meeting department standards/goals for student achievement and/or supporting the college in meeting its student achievement standards and/or goals Improving access, success, and completion of targeted student populations through the implementation of the Student Equity Plan Providing effective electronically mediated communication (e.g. website, social media, marketing materials, wifi access) Improving support services to meet demands for online students and students attending at off-campus centers Using data, research and collaborative efforts among divisions and departments to develop projections of student demand, or appropriate course offerings, locations, and modalities
2	LEAD	Personnel	11.000.614.1.493072	51100	$2,100.00	$0.00
Deaf Studies Certificate Program	Development of a two-year certificate program in American Sign Language would serve our students and surrounding communities. Additionally the program would attract students. Stipend for development, $1,600. Materials including DVDs and books on Deaf Culture $500				Maintaining core programs and services
3	LEAD, Reading, Writing	Personnel	11.000.614.1.493072	51100	$3,000.00	$0.00
Online course develpment	Online classes serve a wide range of students; our department offers 9 sections of 3 in-demand online classes. One of the two full time faculty who regularly teach these course will retire at the end of the semester. New course development by faculty is pressing if we are to be able to continue to offer these courses.				Maintaining core programs and services Improving support services to meet demands for online students and students attending at off-campus centers
4	LEAD	Operating Expenses	11.000.614.493072	56411	$2,000.00	$0.00
Ipad training for reading faculty	The WIOA budget has already purchased two iPad carts for use in adult basic education classes. Because ESL classes have reduced access to computer labs at the Chico Center, the department is currently providing professional development ESL for faculty to use one of the carts. The other cart is not currently being used. We would like to develop training, identify appropriate apps and provide iPad training for 200 level reading classes so students can access online materials during classes or conduct research in the classroom. The ways students read and access content has changed in recent years, and out reading faculty need to be able to support students in reading online texts.		Basic Skills Initiative
5	LEAD	Operating Expenses	11.000.614.1.493072	54300	$2,500.00	$0.00
Publicity and Outreach Materials for Basic Skills	The college directs students to complete their basic skills courses first. To recruit and connect with students and educate them on their options, marketing materials are needed. Of particular concern are students placing into our lowest reading courses where enrollment has dropped. Students at risk and English Language Learners may not access information online, so hard copies flyers are another way to reach students who may benefit from our classes.		Basic Skills Initiative		Maintaining core programs and services
6	LEAD	Equipment	11.000.614.1.493072	56411	$1,500.00	$0.00
1 Computer for FT instructor for department chair	This computer is 7 years old and should be replaced next according to the CLR plan.
7	LEAD, Reading, ESL, Writing	Operating Expenses	11.000.614.1.493072	54300	$0.00	$3,000.00
Department Budget Augmentation	Professional development and assessment including SLOs are core to our work in the LEAD Department. Associate faculty are critical to the work of the college and need to be fairly compensated for their work. With new expectations about SLO dialogue and reporting, department meeting time has been increasingly devoted to this work. The LEAD budget cannot afford mandatory meeting rate for legitimate department work. We are currently in Currriculum Review and next year we will be in Program Review. It is essential that associate faculty participate in this work and in these processes and discussions. The Computer Lifecycle Replacement plan will impact our budget. With 8 full time faculty, the LEAD department may need to replace one computer per year to keep up with CLR goals. This could take half our budget each year.				Maintaining core programs and services Directly supporting meeting department standards/goals for student achievement and/or supporting the college in meeting its student achievement standards and/or goals
8	LEAD	Personnel			$0.00	$10,342.00
Instructional Assistants for English 118	Students need extra support in the 118 Accelerated classrooms. In addition, the connection with CAS tutors will help them in the class as well as make the connection with the services provided on campus.		Student Equity