Mission Statement

The Butte College Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Department serves our community by providing diverse experiential learning opportunities in a progressive curriculum, using advanced technology, industry cooperation, and alumni support to prepare students for productive futures. 

Program Description

This program serves approximately 50 FT students per year moving through either one of two one-year certificate programs or an AS degree program. These students move into highly paid employment immediately following the completion of our programs.
The program hired an additional FT instructor to begin in Fall 2016 after 16 years of attempts to supplement the single FT instructor in the classroom and other duties including equipment fleet management, planning and coordinating student, campus, and community service projects, and providing community education services through Contract Education. We also have a new PT instructor serving in spring 17, and a third-year PT instructor serving fall and spring. The third-year instructor has been instrumental in designing and presenting the AET 44 Grade Setting and GPS class, which has enabled us to utilize the capabilities of our technology and provide critical learning opportunities to our program students. There remains a need to further develop these opportunities, and we are currently working with Engineering to combine instruction in the AET 44 class and ENGR 4 Plane Surveying class to better serve both groups.  The addition of the FT instructor should help us to further develop industry connections and plan for program improvements and growth. We continue to overenroll our class above the 22 cap, and use student assistants when we can to ensure the safety and provide for the needs of our students. (Note that industry does not work with anywhere near this number of students in their training programs). Smaller classes would improve learning. The Heavy Equipment Operation program has been impacted for years; we could accommodate more students if we increased course offerings and hired another FT instructor. A realignment may be in order to make this possible and we are exploring some ways to achieve those ends. 
More and more current equipment is needed to improve our abilities to match student capabilities with industry needs. Our equipment is large and expensive, even when used. Our ability to obtain good used equipment is severely hampered by our current processes, and we would wish to have discussions to address that. Our now aging fleet was built primarily through our use of �deliberate and responsible opportunism�, and without the ability to quickly move on advantageous opportunities we are missing out on getting equipment that we need, and sometimes spending more than should be required by having to submit requests for new machines. Some machines are so expensive as to preclude the likely possibility of purchase of new units. Depending on model a new Caterpillar motor grader will cost $400-500,000 or more. Used ones can be had for much less, but purchase must be made in a very timely manner; not many sellers can wait for our processes. 
We are currently under construction on a site to accommodate operation in inclement weather. In wet years we have been severely restricted in our operations, and students suffer when they cannot complete the many hours of practice required to achieve the necessary skills. Some grants have been obtained toward this purpose, and more may be needed. 

Student Learning/Administrative Unit Outcomes

As we reflect on the brief reflections for the many classes in AET, we were pleased to see that student learning continues to improve. We do however feel that students need more seat time on the equipment in order to develop job/employment level proficiency. In addition, students need access to modern equipment of the type used by employers.
We have acquired state of the art simulators that permit access and seat time on modern equipment. Another benefit is that this equipment is located indoors and can used during inclement weather.

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (Instruction Departments)

The retention rates - talk about what happened in 2016 to spike it up to 97%. Also talk about what you did in 2018-19 to move the needle up a percent to 94%.
Success rates have improved from 84% in 2015-16 to 86% in 2018-19. What caused the sharp drop in 2017? What did you do to come back 8% from 2017 to 2018?

Talk about the reason you think the awards confered dropped 20.51% in 2018.
Over the past four academic years
30-59 unit Certificate of Achievement 132
18-29 unit Certificate of Achievment 20
Associate in Science 18
 

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (All Other Departments)

W are focusing on success and retention, looking at the above numbers proves that our focus has served our students well.

Strategic Direction

With enrollment in general low campus wide we have been recruting heavily to try to bolster our numbers

Program Review

Program review recommendations have commended us for the quality of our hands-on training in heavy equipment operation. As per program review suggestions we have incorporated the latest methods of laser and GPS assisted grade setting. We have acquired the necessary equipment including state of the art software and a computer to run it, as well as integrated this into our curriculum with a new course AET 44 Grade Setting.

Department Goals

We have finally gotten back to a Fall only start for our program, this has hurt our enrollment a little bit but should be corrected by this fall. Now that the program is tracking correctly we need to revise our curriculum accordingly.

Future Development Strategies

Requested Non-Financial Resources

Current Financial Resources

Augmentation Requests