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The Social Change
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Questions about the portfolio requirement should be addressed to Lynn Walter, who is the current instructor. Her e-mail address is: walterl@uwgb.edu
Social Change and Development is an interdisciplinary program at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay
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The faculty in Social
Change and Development are concerned that our curriculum should pay attention to how students will mesh their educations with various life choices that must
be made before and after graduation. Most important among these choices is, of course, the
selection of a career, but we are also concerned that our students think about their
educations in the context of other things like family responsibilities,
non-work interests, and citizenship. We hope to promote active reflection about these things during
the course of a major in Social Change and Development. To this end we have instituted the
portfolio requirement.
Social Change and Development requires its majors to take 2 credits of a course called Portfolio in Social Change and Development (SOC C D 302). This course counts as one credit each time it is taken and we require students to take it twice, once upon entry to our program and a second time in the senior year, perhaps in the second to last semester before graduation (especially if they are contemplating making applications to graduate or professional schools). Each time students take this course, they will spend time compiling a portfolio into which they will insert various kinds of evidence of their progress in the major and accomplishment with respect to skills acquired or improved. Most important will be a demonstration of writing skills, and time will be devoted to helping students polish a piece of writing, typically done for another course, into the best possible shape for presentation as a writing sample to accompany graduate school and other kinds of applications. A centerpiece of each portfolio experience will be the writing of an essay that reflects upon students' ambitions, educational experiences, opportunities, and realities with respect to after-college life choices. This will be an opportunity to think and write about career choices and what they imply about further education, either at the University of Wisconsin -- Green Bay, or afterwards. It will also provide an opportunity to reflect upon how the values and ideas that students pick up during their college careers may mesh with those choices. Other kinds of things find their way into portfolios. For instance, students who have passions and pastimes, like acting, photography, or computing, that might in some way provide useful skills after college, are invited to include evidence of them in the portfolio. In this context a student could create a photo essay, a web site, or a one person play and include it. (An example that comes to mind is a marvelous video tape made by one of our graduates for the course Social Change and Development in a Selected Area: Italy, in which she wrote and convincingly performed a monolog in the persona of Toto Riina, notorious Sicilian mafia boss.) An obvious component of portfolios updated by students in their senior years is a résumé, and help from the university's Career Services office will be provided to meet this end. Students going further in their educations will want to develop and include the materials they will need for making applications: statements of purpose and the beginnings of a curriculum vitae. We also strongly encourage minors to sign up, even if for only one running of the course. However, portfolio is only formally required of majors in Social Change & Development |
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