Mission Statement

Housed in the Sociocultural Studies Department, Geography promotes student success, completion and transfer. The program 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 the health of the planet.

Program Description

The Associate in Arts in Geography for Transfer degree (AA-T Geography) creates a transfer pathway for students who plan to complete a four-year degree at a California State University. Upon completion of the 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.

The associate transfer degrees (AA-T or AS-T) require completion and certification of the California State University General Education (CSU GE) or the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) as well as the specific AA-T or AS-T major degree requirements. Students earning either an AA-T or an AS-T will not be held to additional Butte College graduation requirements (including Physical Education and the multicultural competency). Students should work with a counselor to identify major coursework that can be used to fulfill CSU GE or IGETC categories.

To obtain an Associate's degree, students must complete both the major requirements and the graduation requirements listed in this catalog.

Note that some courses have a prerequisite (P), corequisite (C), or both (P/C). Prerequisites and corequisites are listed within each course description in that catalog.

Transfer majors designated as AA-T or AS-T are designed for transfer to a similar major at an unspecified CSU. 

Transfer majors designated as AA or AS are designed for transfer to the corresponding major at a specific CSU and are based on articulation. See a counselor for more information. Read about the difference between these types of degrees at the beginning of the Transfer section of this catalog.

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 courses that comprise the AA-T degree are also for Butte and transfer General Education. With 34 sections offered each school year, Geography serves a significant 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, GEOG 2 Physical Geography, focuses on physical/natural phenomena.

Currently, there is one full-time faculty in the discipline and 4 associate faculty. In Spring 2019, 68% of courses offered in Geography are being taught by associate faculty.

Student Learning/Administrative Unit Outcomes

Student Learning Outcomes - GEOG

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (Instruction Departments)

As the implementation of the AAT program and the corresponding development of Guided Pathway, GEOG is a discipline that has lost a number of sections because the courses did not end up within a particular AAT program and students are being directed as to what to take for specific coursework. GEOG will need to develop ways to increase student enrollment that have some choice as to their general education requirements. Various methods of marketing will be attempted, such as presentations at the Academic Showcase.
 

Success and retention rates were beginning to improve starting in 2016. Beginning in 2018, both success and retention began to falter, likely because of events occurring outside of the classroom. The Camp Fire, subsequent power outages, and the COVID outbreak created a situation where maintaining continuity where major challenges. Retintion rates have begun to increase, in combination with a decrease in success rates. 

Standards/Goals for Student Achievement (All Other Departments)

Strategic Direction

The Geography Department supports the college in meeting its Strategic Direction and Priority Themes by:

Enhancing a Culture of Completion and Goal Achievement - Faculty is working to provide as many courses as possible with free, open-source textbooks, thereby reducing costs for students.
Supporting Student, Faculty, and Staff Success - Enhance SLO Participation: provide stipends for associate faculty to perform 'deep dive.' 
Meeting Enrollment Targets - Provide various marketing methods to increase enrollment of GEOG courses, such as creating short videos of the discipline Anthropology that would be presented to high school counselors in the college service area.
Meeting student achievement goals – Student success continues to be a problem. More information is needed on the root causes of Anthropology's low success rate, meaningful before any attempts can be made to improve those rates.

Program Review

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. Most of the associate faculty teaching geography are retired individuals who may or may not continue teaching for long. Also, 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 single full-time faculty member. Geography'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 better align Geography 2 and Geography 3, as it would be most beneficial to the student, and it would also better align Butte College with Chico State and other CSUs in the system. However, this would require another full-time position. A dedicated space because the current room is not set up for labs would also be a benefit.

Department Goals

Future Development Strategies

Requested Non-Financial Resources

Current Financial Resources