The mission of the Mathematics Department is to meet the mathematics needs of all Butte College students by offering quality mathematics instruction. Our department serves three primary groups of students: developmental, transfer, and STEM majors. Through our commitment to excellent teaching in a supportive environment, our students develop mathematical expertise, comprehension, and confidence. A corollary to our mission is to accelerate students in developmental math classes as quickly as possible, enabling them to finish their math courses with a passing grade in a transfer-level math class within two years of enrolling at Butte College.
The mathematics department offers a comprehensive two-year program leading to an Associate of Science Degree in Mathematics. The AS-T degree in Mathematics is designed for students who will transfer to a four-year institution to pursue a degree in mathematics. The program allows the students to transfer with all of their freshman and sophomore requirements completed. The mathematics department also offers courses designed as general education courses for other majors (complete list available) and a complete developmental and basic skills program for students who need remediation before entering a transfer-level mathematics course. As a measure of the demand for math classes, approximately 85% of our Fall 2015 classes were 100% full as of census. While we also added 8 sections to the Fall 2014 semester we have had to cancel a total of 4 fully enrolled classes, 4 nearly full classes and 6 others in 2015-2016 due to a lack of available instructors. This year we had a total of 119 sections offered in Fall 2015 and 102 in Spring 2016. Included in those sections are classes scheduled beyond the main campus. We schedule 20-22 classes at the Chico Center, 18-20 classes in the evenings at Chico State, 5 classes in Glenn County, and one class in Paradise. We currently offer 18 sections of math during the summer. Most math classes offered on the main campus are scheduled in the Technology (TE) building. The TE building has nine classrooms and a math-only computer lab, used as a drop-in lab open to all Butte students taking a math class, and is of particular value to those taking a class that requires online homework. We also have been given full access to a tenth classroom, LB-105. We have continued the use of Supplemental Instruction (SI) in many transfer classes as well as the Math Project in Math 217, 108, 124, and 18 for EOPS students.
One Year Temp Full-Time Faculty
Two Full-Time Faculty
As a result of the new hires and temporary full-time faculty members (three new hires and two temporary full-time), we were able to staff almost all sections in fall 2015 and spring 2016. However three-fourths of the full-time faculty members (including the temporary full-time members) are teaching an overload. In addition, we needed four associate faculty members to take a year-long work agreement, where they are teaching more units in the fall than they will be this coming spring. An unpredicted benefit, the enthusiasm of new full-time faculty has spawned (sparked) collaborative discussion about improving student success rates in Developmental Math as well as our Statistics classes. By increasing the number of full-time faculty members, we have given students greater access to their instructors, which in itself, has a tremendous positive impact on success. Insightful, collegial dialogue abounds anew in our department.
We continue to see our developmental classes, particularly math 217, struggle to achieve mastery of the Student Learning Outcomes. We want to add support to our math 217 classes and potentially math 108 in the form of in-class student assistants. We would like to be able to purchase at least one set of laptops to be used in math 217 classes allowing for small-group instruction and individual practice using the "Aleks" program. This particular program has been shown to successfully help students achieve mastery of student learning outcomes at many other community colleges in developmental math.
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College |
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Program |
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Indicator |
Source |
2013-2014 Performance |
Standard |
Five Year Goal |
Fall 2014 Performance |
Standard |
Five Year Goal |
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Course Success |
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- Overall |
PDR |
71.1% |
70% |
73% |
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- Transfer/GE |
PDR |
71.5% |
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73% |
63.6% |
60% |
66% |
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- CTE |
PDR |
75% |
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77% |
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- Basic Skills |
PDR |
51.7% |
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55% |
47.3% |
50% |
55% |
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- Distance Ed (all) |
PDR |
62.5% |
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64% |
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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 |
51.4% |
50% |
53% |
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Degrees |
PDR |
1,455 |
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1,600 |
AS:3 AS-T: 8 |
5 |
17 |
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Certificates |
PDR |
366 |
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475 |
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Developmental Strand Completion |
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- English |
State |
42% |
35% |
45% |
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- Math |
State |
30.7% |
25% |
33% |
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- ESL |
State |
25% |
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28% |
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Licensure Pass Rates |
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- Registered Nursing |
SC |
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- Licensed Vocational Nursing |
SC |
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- Respiratory Therapy |
SC |
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- Paramedic |
SC |
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- Cosmetology |
SC |
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- Welding |
SC |
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Job Placement Rates |
PIV |
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The math department supports the college in meeting its Strategic Direction and Priorities by:
1. Enhancing a culture of completion and academic achievement
a) Connection
4- We continue to have College Connection students in many of our classes.
5- We hope to more fully support this with the addition of student assistants and laptops integrated into our Math 217 classes beginning next fall. Many instructors have adopted online homework into their classes. One very useful feature is instant feedback as to correctness of method.
b) Entry
2- We will be implementing a pilot using multiple measures sometime this spring or next fall to augment our already successful use of limited multiple measures to ensure proper placement of students in their math classes. The pilot will not only use a student's grade in a particular high school math class, but will incorporate the use of high school grade point average, as well.
4- Last fall we submitted all of our courses to update prerequisites and ensure they are being enforced. For the first time next fall, we will finally be enforcing prerequisites for classes beyond math 30.
d) Completion
3- We offer an AS-T in math
f) Technology
3- We hope to more fully support this with the introduction of laptops into math 217.
g) Facilities
1- We have worked with the state architect to develop a plan to remodel the technology building. We revised it last year to incorporate the new women's and all-gender bathrooms.
2. Supporting student, faculty, and staff success
d) Collaboration and decision making
6-Many members of the math department meet regularly in a small group to solve math problems. The women in the department, along with one counselor and a Communication Studies instructor have formed a book group to read the book in common each year and discuss its relevance in our classes. Several members of the department visit each other's classes to share ideas and strategies for student success. Now that this is an official flex opportunity, this practice will likely increase in the coming years. We also frequently have faculty who form a partnership to look at particular classes and way to promote student success. These are sometimes formed by two full-time faculty members, or by one assocaite faculty member and one full-time faculty member.
The 13 recommendations from our validation report dated March 2014 are:
1. The Technology building remains at the top of the list for remodel when funds become available, and we now have a remodeled women's restroom in addition to an all-gender restroom.
2. We continue to ask for our building to be renamed and the signs changed in our Unit Plan, but this has yet to occur.
3. We were able to replace our three retirements with three full-time faculty members, and have been approved for three additional full-time hires to start fall 2016. This will bring our department up to its largest ever at 16 full time instructors. We still continue to see a decrease in our associate faculty pool and remain concerned that we will be unable to staff the same number of classes that we currently offer. In fact this spring, we are down to only 102 sections instead of 113.
4. All of our rooms in the Technology building (except 105B) were fitted with up to date equipment and other than the occasional glitch, it is working well.
5. We hope to be able to devote time during summer 2016 to developing a combined beginning and intermediate algebra course with the help of some grant funding. With nearly the entire department teaching overloads, there is little time and energy to work on this during the regular semester.
6. We hope to pilot additional multiple measures during spring 2016 to more accurately place students into their first math class.
7. We continue to lack evening classroom space in Chico, other than on the campus of CSUC. This continues to be problematic. For the last three semester, they have had a hard time finding smart rooms for us to use. We are not sure of the reason behind this as it appears that HOLT hall has many unused rooms in the evening, but we are not given access to them.
8. We continue to have a difficult time finding tutors for the Chico Center, Glenn Center, and online classes.
9. In our Unit Plan, we continue to ask for district funding for the math lab. However, since money continues to come to us from Basic Skills Funding, there is little incentive for the district to contribute.
10. This recommendation suggests that we look at our data for classes below transfer all together under the title "Developmental Math." This would group 200 level classes with 100 level classes. Currently, Math 217 (our only remaining 200 level class) is singled out in our date reports. This has not been resolved as we continue to get reports from our institutional research office that singles math 217 out as remedial math.
11. During our last several large department meetings on Institute Day, we have held our meeting later than the rest of the campus to accommodate our Associate Faculty who have day jobs. The change in timing on Institute Day contributed to our Associate Faculty feeling marginalized and unimportant. Our most recent meeting included an hour and a half in break-out sessions where we specifically sought the contributions of ALL our faculty members. There will likely be one or two department meetings this spring where all will be invited to attend. However, since we offer classes from 7:20 am to 9:50 pm, the only time we can hope to all get together is on a Friday evening. The most convenient place for the vast majority would be at the Chico Center, which closes early on Fridays. We are looking into the possibility of holding a meeting at the Skyway Center, but it doesn't look promising.
12. We continue to praise and heavily use the print shop and are supportive of it being fully funded and fully functioning.
13. We are happy to have our department secretary back to a 12 month position and that she was not required to relocate during summer 2015. However, the air was turned off for the majority of the summer in the building, so it was a less than desirable situation. We suggest scheduling classes in the Tech building during summer 2016 so that we can keep the air on and have her available to support both faculty and students.
Our goals are to increase student success rates and provide students the opportunity to complete their math requirements in two years or less.
Strategy 1 - Improving Success Rates in Developmental Math
One change we had hoped would increase the success rate of our 217 students in the 2014-2015 academic year, was to transform many of our 2-day per week offerings to 4-days per week. Shorter class times, but more frequent meetings is a preferred schedule for most math classes. However, the success rates in Math 217 have continued to be at an all-time low. In the fall of 2015, we reinstated the Math Project run through EOPS, as this has a history of increasing student success. As of the time of this writing, the class has not finished, so the success rate is unknown. In the fall of 2016, we had hoped to bring back Math 216, Basic Math. This would better serve students who are underprepared for Math 217, as the elimination of classes below Math 217 has had a negative impact on all Math 217 classes. Students who need more remediation have become frustrated and have been withdrawing from the class early in the semester as their hopes of success dwindle. However the members of the Curriculum Committee decided the Basic Math class was not in the best interest of students so they denied our proposal. We are reluctant to ever return to the committee with innovative proposals due to the time they take to create and the lack of support we feel from some members of the committee. With the majority of our faculty members teaching overloads due to lack of available associate faculty members, we have little time to work on proposals. When we devote precious hours developing a proposal that must pass through the curriculum committee and are told we will not be supported, it makes us unwilling to spend time on this type of work in the future.
We are, however, hopeful that we can bring laptops and student assistants into our existing Math 217 classes to allow small group instruction and in-class technology assisted assessment.
The return of Math 216 is based on feedback from current Math 217 instructors as well as data from our Math 217 SLO Assessment, which has been showing a decrease in overall scores. Student retention in these classes has also been decreasing, possibly due to the number of students who are finding the class is beyond their abilities. We hoped that the return of Math 216 creates a bridge to success for underprepared Math 217 students. Other community colleges have seen increased success rate with the addition of technology-assisted assessment and student assistant availability. Bringing students assistants and technology into math classrooms has shown to improve student success at other community colleges.
Strategy 2 - Transfer Acceleration
Mark Mavis piloted our first accelerated classes in Fall 2012. Registered students take Math 124 and Math 18, back-to-back, in the same semester, earning eight units, completing one developmental and one transfer-level math class. We added a second section of 124/18 at the Chico Center for 2013/2014 and a third section (held on the main campus) for 2014/2015. The pass rates for the accelerated model continue to be at or above the pass rates for our traditional Math 124 and Math 18 classes, confirming that the Math 124/18 class is valuable to students. A recent study by one of our institutional researchers comparing the success rates of Math 108 students who received an A or B and chose the accelerated model versus those who chose the traditional, semester-long model found the success rates of these two groups are not statistically different, suggesting that it is providing a valid path for students. We will expand this to one more section in the early afternoon on the main campus in the fall of 2016, but have determined that it is not a viable option for course combinations of Math 124 and other transfer classes.
Because the success rate for this model is at or above the success rate for these classes taught in the traditional model, we will continue to offer several sections per semester. Students in these classes have a higher retention rate than the traditional model and are often able to transfer a semester sooner than they would without this offering. These Math 124 classes participated in SLO Assessment in spring 2015 which confirmed that their success on SLOs was indeed greater than or equal our traditional Math 124 classes. The Math 18 portion will be assessed along with all other sections of Math 18 as scheduled in our SLO matrix.
Strategy 3 - Online Courses
With the spring 2015 retirement of faculty members who taught online, we were left with only one online course, Math 124, in Fall 2015. However we have a faculty member who will be developing a Math 18, and another faculty member who is currently developing a Math 108. We are hoping these will be available starting fall 2016. We are excited to be able to offer students a way to complete their Associates Degree online and at least one transfer level math class. However, we only support this model if all tests are given in a proctored environment so that the identity of the person receiving credit for the class can be verified.
Some students find it impossible to come to class due to health, family obligations, and distance from campus. Although the success rate for this type of math class is much lower than a face-to-face class, online classes meet the needs of a small group of dedicated students.
Strategy 4 - Maximizing the Schedule
The math department needs to increase the number of both full and part-time instructors. This will allow us to offer an adequate number of sections to maximize FTES for the college and ensure students can complete their math requirements in 2 years or less.
The math department continues to see high demand for classes at all levels. Almost all students who attend Butte College for any reason need to take at least one math class. Several years ago there were 15 full-time instructors and nearly 40 associate faculty members in the department. We are now running the department with 13 full-time members, 2 temporary full-time members and less than 30 associate faculty. In order to continue to assist the students of Butte College, we must increase our full-time and part-time staff. Of those needs, increasing the number of full-time faculty is the greatest need and the best for students. Full-time faculty are more available to assist students outside of the classroom. This year both fall and spring semester, we have ten full-time faculty members teaching an overload. Without this, those classes would be cancelled. We are excited to be hiring 3 full-time members to start fall 2016, bringing our department up to 16, its largest full-time membership ever. Of course these new faculty will need new computers and offices. We have two offices in the Technology building that we can use, and hope to have access to the office in the LRC that is currently occupied by one of our full-time temporary instructors.
All classes in the math department have a pedagogical cap of 35 students. However, two of our classrooms have a room cap of 32, and two others have to be supplemented with folding desks to provide room for 35 students. It seems reasonable that classes with a pedagogical cap less than 35 (unless they have specific lab needs) should be scheduled in these rooms and our classes should be scheduled in rooms large enough to accommodate 35 students. It is unlikely that any department will willingly give up their large rooms to come into the depressing rooms in the Technology building, so the only way this will happen is if an administrator makes the decision. Two things prevent access to math classes for students, room availability in the peak times, and lack of available faculty. As our department grows with additional full-time faculty, but loses associate faculty, there will be more people available to teach during the day. If we had access to larger classrooms as well as additional classrooms, we would be able to serve many more students. This is supported by our most recent program review, where students volunteered their feelings about this building, specifically that conditions make them feel unwelcome and undervalued.
Our budget is the only source of guaranteed revenue for the math department. We frequently benefit from funding through the Basic Skills Initiative, but this is generally temporary or one-time funding. We may have some additional funds to support our ideas for increasing student success in developmental math through grants this year.
| 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 | Mathematics | Personnel | 11.000.615.1.170100 | 52468 | $0.00 | $12,182.00 |
| Student assistant money for Computer Lab monitors/tutors. | Students necessary to monitor and tutor math students in the Computer Lab. |
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| 2 | Mathematics | Equipment | 11.000.615.1.170100 | 00000 | $14,000.00 | $0.00 |
| New chairs to replace the current ones in our computer lab (TE 122), most of which are broken. | The current chairs that are broken put students in a terrible position for working on a computer and the majority of students who use the lab are in Developmental Math classes. Broken chairs can potentially cause accidents. |
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| 3 | Mathematics | Personnel | 11.000.615.1.170100 | 51391 | $0.00 | $25,500.00 |
| Associate Faculty Office Hours | Students do not have equal access to their instructors when they are Associate Faculty, unless those faculty choose to donate their time. The ongoing cost was calculated by using $25 per hour, 2 hours per week, 17 weeks per semester times 30 instructors. |
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| 4 | Mathematics | Facilities | 11.000.615.1.170100 | 00000 | $8,000.00 | $0.00 |
| Independent thermostat for TE-110 and TE-111 | Two rooms attached to one thermostat does not work when there are no students in the room with the thermostat. No HVAC reaches the other room. |
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| 5 | Mathematics | Personnel | 11.000.615.1.170100 | 52000 | $0.00 | $11,200.00 |
| Custodial Staff | To maintain the building at level 3 cleanliness, we need an increase of 0.3 of a custodian. This will also help keep our brand new restroom at level 2. |
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| 6 | Mathematics | Facilities | 11.000.615.1.170100 | 00000 | $13,100.00 | $0.00 |
| New signs for Technology building to read Mathematics | We no longer teach engineering or drafting in this building. It is dedicated to teaching mathematics and we'd like it to say so. Also, with the college being a leader in statewide technology, I have frequently had to redirect visitors on our campus to the building managing that program, AHPS South. Understandably visitors assumed that the Technology Building houses the technology program. |
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