Listed as a requirement for graduation on page 6 of this Handbook is the maintenance and completion of a student portfolio. Just like an artist’s portfolio, a student portfolio is a collection of your work. In a binder (described below), you are expected to collect all the work you do in your non-GCP prerequisite and required social work courses. Your portfolio will also include self-reflection exercises and a section in which you create and implement a professional development plan for semester after Advancement. You should also include any assignments from other courses which you believe show your strengths, significant learning/accomplishment, potential, and/or effort regardless of the grade received.

You need to purchase a 4'' or 5" binder with dividers to store your collected work. The work must be organized accordingly:

The purposes of the portfolio are (a) to help you learn and grow as a social worker and (b) to help us give you the opportunity and the feedback to do this learning and growing. When the faculty look at the portfolio, they are not looking at your grades. They are looking at the bigger picture- your development over time. If you approach the portfolio in the same way, as a means to see your own growth over time, you will find the portfolio is a powerful learning tool. You will be able to see the interrelatedness of the knowledge you have learned and your ability to integrate this knowledge better, semester after semester. Divided by semester, the portfolio will serve as a reminder of what you learned in the previous semester and serve as a "bridge" between courses. You will find yourself engaged in your own learning and from this exercise, you will learn important lessons about managing the social work problem-solving process with the people you will be helping. The reflection exercises are designed to help you with this. They will help you think about how you think, how you learn, how you communicate etc.

Your portfolio will also be part of our assessment of how you, individually and collectively, are doing. The word assessment often is interpreted as "a test" but that is not how we think of this particular assessment. The portfolio gives the faculty concrete examples of what you are doing so that we can work with you to identify learning goals that will help you develop as a social worker. When we look at all the portfolios as an aggregate, they will help us assess the education we are offering you so that we can make sure you have the experiences needed to be a professional social worker prior to graduation. Your work helps us see if we are providing those opportunities. While this may sound overwhelming and may provoke anxiety, the portfolios are a measure of your development and commitment, not your self-worth.

Your portfolio will be yours to keep but it will routinely be monitored by the social work faculty. This may be done in the form of course portfolios in individual courses. These course portfolios may be part of the grade for an individual class. Your advisor may ask to see the portfolio on a periodic basis. Or, groups of you may be asked to share the entire contents of it with the whole faculty on a given day. During the final weeks of your Senior year, you will assess your portfolio and your experience. The faculty and members of the Advisory Committee will assess it to see if the program is meeting its learning objectives (see Section X). After graduation you may decide to use your portfolio on job interviews to show not only what you learned but also your ability to learn over time. And, it serves as a good resource for your job or for graduate school studies.

Each semester after Advancement, you will be asked to write a reflection paper at the beginning of your Methods course. This paper is designed to help you bridge your learning from semester to semester. It is also meant to help you think about you. Social work is a profession in which you learn to use yourself to help others. Self-awareness and self-evaluation are critical components of your ability to grow as a person and professional to help others. At the end of each Fall semester reflection paper, you will identify professional growth learning objectives for the year. With the help of your advisor, you will identify tasks that will help you accomplish these objectives. Each of you will have different plans.

B. Professional Development Section Further Explained

Social workers are life-long learners who seek out new knowledge and skills and who find ways to refresh their current practice. This section of your portfolio is meant to have you practice this attribute by asking you to define your own growth needs and the tasks needed to gain this new knowledge, skill or perspective. It may be the only way you will learn something of importance to you that we cannot offer through traditional classroom methods. The program outlined below is the modification of last year’s UCEU program which was instituted to meet the same goals.

Starting in the Junior year, you will identify at least four (4) professional learning goals and the tasks needed to accomplish these goals at the beginning of each Fall semester in the reflection paper. You are then responsible for keeping a journal chronicling the activity you undertook and reflecting on how the task/activity influenced your professional growth. Your advisor must approve your plan at midterm time of the Fall semester and will read your journal at the end of the Spring semester. (Your objectives and plans can be modified during the year by talking with your advisor and seeking his/her approval). Three (3) of your tasks must be attendance at a program sponsored event. The program will sponsor a series of community speakers (or endorse community events) who will talk about a topic in their area of practice expertise. Workshops on resume writing, the Job search, interviewing, writing a research paper, etc. using College resources such as Career Planning will also be scheduled. Attendance at these events is not limited to this professional development project. The events are meant to broaden the program’s educational offerings. If a scheduled event interests you, please attend. However, if you attended an event because you had an interest but it did not fit your plan, you may not rewrite your objectives after the fact to make the activity meet your plan.

Task 1 - I will introduce myself to one new person every week.

Task 3 - I will attend the interviewing skills workshop offered by the program.

Task 4 - I will interview a school social worker (See Learning Objective 3, Task 1).

Learning Objective 2 - I would like to write better

Task 3 - I will attend the writing workshop offered by the program.

Learning Objective 3 - I want to know more about what school social workers do

Task 2- I will negotiate the opportunity to job shadow once during the year.

Task 3 - I will attend the school social work talk sponsored by the program.