Portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of materials that represent your work, skills, ideas, and values. A portfolio includes material from different points in your academic career that will reflect growth in your thinking, an evolution in your skills, and changes in your attitudes. It is a record of your intellectual development at UW Tacoma. Your portfolio will contain a number of carefully selected papers you have written in your classes, as well a reflective cover letter and some portfolio forms that you, your teachers and your classmates have filled out to assess your work. Depending on your major, it may also contain samples of your creative work or lab research.
No grade is attached to the portfolio, and it will not have any impact on your GPA or become part of your official transcript. However, the portfolio is a graduation requirement for all students in the IAS program, and you cannot graduate without going through the portfolio assessment process.

In the beginning, you won’t know what to put in your portfolio, so the best advice is to save and organize all the writing you do in your classes. YOU WILL NEED THE ORIGINAL COPIES OF YOUR WORK (with grades and/or comments written by instructors), so always ask for your papers back, and file them in a place where they will not get damaged or lost. Do not throw any of your writing away. You want to have as much material as possible to choose from when you turn in the portfolio, so you can choose the documents that show your growth and development most clearly. You must have something from your first quarter at UW Tacoma, so it is important that you start saving materials for the portfolio from the day you enter the university.
You should also save other kinds of “texts” that you produce in classes: original artwork, films, photography, your creative writing, web pages you designed. In short, value and keep anything that represents you as an active learner. Date the materials you keep, and be sure to write down where, why, when, and how you generated them. Then, when you want to review your collection, the chronology of works may provide some insights.
Review and update your portfolio regularly. Add new materials from the quarter just ending, and review and reorganize the older materials. Don’t just keep works with high grades. There is no grade attached to the portfolio, so we are not looking for evidence that you are an “A” student. We want to see what you have learned and what you know. We are interested in seeing how you have developed as a student. Also, you can gain a more complete view of your own work and your growth when you have a lot of material to analyze.
As you approach your final quarter at UW Tacoma, select the most appropriate documents to include in your portfolio. You may want to work with a faculty adviser on the selection process. Although you will not be able to include everything you have produced, you want to have as much data as possible to choose from so you can select your most representative and important work.

In the quarter you plan to graduate, your portfolio will be reviewed by an IAS faculty member who is affiliated with your major. The faculty member will check to see that your portfolio is complete but, more importantly, will assess the work you have done as a student in the IAS program. We look at portfolios to determine if we are providing you with the best education possible by studying the portfolios for patterns in student learning to see how we are helping you achieve specific learning outcomes. While we are assessing your work, it is important you know that we are also assessing the IAS program. The assessment of your portfolio is never reported to anyone with individual student names attached. Rather, we look at collective data statistically and use that data to improve our teaching and curriculum.

No. A portfolio gives you a unique opportunity to think about the learning process. It allows you to reflect on the many intellectual challenges you encountered at UW Tacoma, and lets you assess what you have learned so far and decide what areas you would like to develop further. It helps you to discover more about yourself and appreciate your strengths and achievements.
Your portfolio can help you to reflect on your personal growth and understand your work in that context. It may help you in setting goals for the future, in planning a career, or in making a commitment to a social or political cause. It may remind you of who you were as you entered the university and may reflect, to you and other readers of your portfolio, who you have become. The portfolio assessment process is also valuable to the university, because it allows us to determine how we are meeting the stated learning outcomes that guide our curriculum.

To some degree, this is determined by your major. Once you have declared your major, work with a faculty adviser to discuss which of your papers and documents are most appropriate to include in the portfolio. You should also review the checklist and portfolio forms below.

There is a two-week window of time when you must submit your portfolio. It must be turned into the IAS office sometime during the first two weeks of the quarter you plan to graduate. You cannot turn it in earlier than the quarter you plan to graduate. If you turn it in late, you will not graduate on time. It is your responsibility to meet the deadline and turn in the portfolio in a timely manner. Always keep a copy of the materials you turn in, in the event that your portfolio is lost or misplaced. You will get a receipt when you turn in the portfolio. Hold on to it as proof that you have submitted the portfolio in on time.

Yes. You can pick up your portfolio at the front desk of the IAS program office during the last two weeks of the quarter you graduate. We keep portfolios on file for 3 months only. If you do not claim yours, it will be destroyed.

The reflective essay is an opportunity to think about how the material included in your portfolio represents your growth and development within Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at UW Tacoma. The goal for students, as well as faculty, is to reflect on how this material addresses the core Student Learning Objectives of IAS, including the development of written communication skills, advancement in critical thinking, and the application of theories, concepts and methods in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis.
The first step is to select materials that address these different objectives.
The paper written in the first quarter of residence provides a measurement of your written and analytical skills upon your arrival at UW Tacoma. As such, it might not be the paper with the highest grade but one in which you tried to think about things in new ways and communicate these ideas.
The second and third papers direct us toward our core learning objectives: critical thinking from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. There are various ways to define critical thinking, but it relates to decisions or positions based on reasonable and reflective thinking and investigation. This involves the seeking of alternative hypotheses, explanations, conclusions, sources, etc. and being open to them. When you take such an approach to the analysis of complex relations between groups, societies, cultures and the natural environment and integrate frameworks from across disciplines, you have realized the type of learning that IAS is about.
Each major and concentration within IAS is guided by its own set of Student Learning Outcomes. Your fourth paper or equivalent project should demonstrate that you have achieved these outcomes, and have thus mastered the knowledge and skills associated with your major(s). You can demonstrate the depth and breadth of your achievement within your major(s) by selecting a paper or equivalent project that addresses multiple learning outcomes simultaneously. This item should represent your best work in your major or concentration, whether that is a research paper, creative prose, or some other project. Chose a paper or project from a course that fulfills a requirement for your major or concentration (not an elective). It does not have to be an “A” project but, rather, a project that shows your growth and development as a student. We define “best” to mean the work that reflects you in the way you want the world to see you.
Once you have selected the four items, reflect on how your written and analytical skills have grown and developed. Deliberate over what you have learned, not on specific topics, but rather on the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. Think about how this work represents new and different ways of approaching the evaluation of complex topics in our lives. Such consideration is the foundation for a meaningful reflective essay.
In your essay, be sure to explain how the work you have submitted fits into the designated categories. For example, how does your second paper represent the development of critical thinking skills? What makes your third paper a good example of interdisciplinary or cross-cultural analysis? Identify the learning outcomes that your fourth paper or equivalent project addresses, and explain how it does so.
The reflective essay should be between 400-500 words. It must be written and submitted at the time you turn in the portfolio.