University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Portfolio in Social Change and Development
875-302
The faculty in Social Change and Development are concerned that our curriculum should provide 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, avocational 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
incoming majors to take 2 credits of a course called Portfolio in Social Change
and Development. This course counts as one credit each time it is taken and we
expect 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, time will be spent 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 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 with
respect to 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 will 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 Social Change and Development in a Selected Area 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 service’s 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 SCD
Portfolio Activities
A. What are your career interests? Why? (Think creatively about this question. For example, you might consider what career you would want if you were guaranteed that you could have any job you want. Also, think about the kinds of qualities that you want to find in your work and workplace.)
B. How do your career interests relate to your family, religion, friends, community organizations, hobbies, values, etc.
C. How will/have your university education and SCD courses/major help you to meet these goals?
II. Resume or Curriculum Vita
III. Roots Essay