The Evergreen Portfolio
An Evergreen portfolio is a collection of materials that represent a student's academic planning process and education experiences while at The Evergreen State College. This portfolio is a tool for documenting progress, displaying expertise, tracking accomplishments and self-assessment. Faculty in your programs may ask you to maintain a portfolio of the work you produce in an academic program as a record of your achievement and for use in evaluation. When you ask faculty to sponsor a contract or internship, they will often want to see your portfolio as the first step.
At a minimum your portfolio should include faculty evaluations of your work, your self-evaluations and some samples or writing or studio work.
A possible outline for a developmental portfolio follow. Keep the Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate in mind throughout the process of building your portfolio.
First Year (Freshman 0 - 44 credits)
Begin your portfolio with the statement of academic intentions you developed in your New Student Advising Workshop. During the year, you can expect to meet with your faculty to discuss you academic plans. Keep the writing that you produce in preparation for that conversation here. Collect samples of your best work and keep this, along with your self, faculty and other evaluations, and program descriptions in your portfolio.
Second Year (Sophomore 45 - 89 credits)
Revisit your academic intentions and continue development of your academic plan. Most second year students are continuing to create a strong breadth of education from which they will develop appropriate specialties. Continue to collect documentation of your strengths and note weaknesses of gaps that you need to fill.
Third Year (Junior 90 - 134 credits)
Once again, update your academic plans. Focus on values and explore options as you begin to develop depth in your field/s of study. Keep track of extracurricular participation, research, career interests, travel experiences, internship possibilities and any efforts to seek our new learning experiences. Continue to keep copies of evaluations, program descriptions and samples of best work. Contact the Career Development Office to begin looking at career or graduate study options, and assess their impact on your undergraduate planning. Use your portfolio to collect documentation and as a reference tool in this process.
Fourth Year (Senior 135 - 180 credits)
Review your academic plan. Your portfolio should now be organized in the way that makes most sense to you. As a whole, it will reflect your Evergreen journey and will serve as a resource as you make a transition to "life after Evergreen." This resource will help you to write your summative self-evaluation reviewing and reflecting on your time at Evergreen and your education as a whole. It will also serve as a resource for writing resumes or graduate school statements. Be sure to continue to keep copies of such documents so that your portfolio can continue to be of use to you in future years.