“In today’s business environment, a bachelor’s degree is almost a foregone conclusion,” says Jeff Badrtalei, associate dean, who is the program’s director and manages the program with the help of undergraduate advisor Ineki Fike. “Even if you have years of experience, not having a bachelor’s can prevent you from moving up. This program opens doors that were previously locked.”

School administrators, human resource representatives, computer program analysts, retail managers, and others – they all face the intimidating decision of whether to go back to school or have their careers suffer. Yet the decision is never that easy. With families to care for and bills to pay, two to four years of evening classes on top of a full-time job can be too much to tackle. In contrast, Applied Studies puts their 56 units of completed associate coursework to the required 120 units for the bachelor’s degree. Up to 18 units of lower division technical course work may be integrated as part of the degree program. By doing so, the length of the degree program can be shortened dramatically.

Bo Mathes embarked on an IT career in the early-1980s. She obtained two associate degrees and moved into contract work with Raytheon in 2001. Like 95 percent of the students within the program, Mathes works full time and then comes to campus to take two night classes a semester. She commutes to campus from her office in El Segundo. The program is also offered through classroom space at Coastline Community College in Garden Grove, which is where Patty Allison has completed most of her classes in the program since the location is closer to her Fountain Valley home.

Challenged to complete her degree by her two children who she has helped put through college, Allison expects to graduate this May. The Boeing accountant says the highlight of the program for her has been the way it folds multiple disciplines into one degree. “The real world is not straight business – it’s a combination of humanities and business, and that’s exactly what this program offers,” she says.

Effective this semester, the program went one step further than the off-campus Garden Grove setting by running the program through CSUDH’s Extended Education’s distance- learning offerings. The distance-learning version broadcasts live lectures via local cable access channels while providing online resources for those viewing the lectures. The TV programs are scheduled on weekends and evenings to accommodate students full-time work schedules, and are then stored as Web casts so that students can go back and view them again.

“It’s a fusion of television and the Internet, and with this program offered this semester, we’re just now seeing how dynamic and powerful that combination can be,” says Extended Education Dean Marge Gordon.

The move to distance learning is not the only new addition to the program. CBAPP instituted a required minor for all students in the program at the start of the Fall 2005 semester. The minor can be completed in any formalized minor program offered within the University and allows the students to further focus and individualize their degrees. The minor is just one more reason why the program is attractive for associate degree holders, but Badrtalei, suggests it also can help organizations and businesses of every ilk by providing a better educated workforce.

“Employees are one of the biggest investments of every organization, and the best way to take advantage of that investment is through continued education. It makes simple dollars-and-cents sense to promote from within, so a program like this can give employees the educational background they need to continue to grow and contribute to their organizations,” he says. “And for the employees they can say, ‘hey, look at me. I’m already here, you know my work ethic, the level of my experience, and what I’m capable of, and now, here’s the degree that can go along with that.’”