BCCC to Begin School Year With Three New Majors, Updated Cafeteria

Bucks County Community College will begin the fall semester later this month with three new majors and a renovated cafeteria. Fall classes at BCCC begin Aug. 24.

The college now offers a certificate in Recreation Leadership and associate’s degrees in Health Information Technology and Criminal Justice in addition to the existing 83 programs.

The classes were added due to demand, Dean of Academic and Curricular Services Catherine McElroy said.

“At Bucks, we continually review our majors to make sure we are meeting the needs of various fields and the needs of students who want to enter those careers,” she said. “These changes reflect those needs.”

Harvey Ellis, the Area Coordinator for Criminal Justice, said the criminal justice program was modified for the first time since 1998. Changes were made to accommodate students who wanted to go into criminal justice rather than become a police or corrections officer.

As far as the associate's degree in health information technology, Tom Zaher, Assistant Academic Dean for the Business Studies Department, said there are plenty of jobs in medical coding and billing.

Medical coding and billing is where notes from doctors are put into a different language for insurance companies so that hospital billing can go through.

"Although it’s a two year program, it’s very intense," he said. "Nonetheless, there are a lot of openings in this particular degree."

In addition to the new majors, the campus is in the final stages of updating the student cafeteria to have a better traffic flow, as well as minimize the amount of echo, said Jean Dolan, the college's assistant director of public relations.

Updates were initially scheduled to be completed before classes start but will likely not be done by that time, Dolan said.

A Starbucks kiosk will also be added once the renovations to the cafeteria are complete.