Engineers With Portfolio

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Artists, designers and architects have used portfolios for years, but now chemical engineering students at the University of Arkansas are using them for academic advising, scholarship applications and even job searches. The U of A is also one of the first traditional programs in the country to use student portfolios as an integral part of the department’s accreditation process.

"Academic portfolios are unusual for a traditional program such as ours," explained Carolyne Garcia, who developed the concept at the University of Arkansas. "They have been used in non-traditional programs, where letter grades are not awarded at all and the student’s graduation is based on the portfolio." Garcia will present her findings at the American Association for Engineering Education National Conference in St. Louis on June 21.

Garcia originally introduced the portfolio into her Professional Practices course as a job search tool. Students were taught the basics and required to develop a portfolio to be used to seek professional employment.

"The response from employers was immediate and enthusiastic," notes Garcia. "The portfolio is a proactive approach that gives potential employers much more information to work with than just a resume. This helps them make more informed, successful decisions."

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), which accredits engineering programs in the United States, revised its evaluation criteria in 1995. The new Criteria2000 required departments to establish measurement tools to gauge student abilities both before and after graduation. ABET identified 11outcomes that should be evaluated, ranging from the ability to identify, formulate and solve engineering problems to the ability to communicate effectively and to function on multidisciplinary teams.

"The University of Arkansas College of Engineering was selected to be the first traditional program evaluated under the new criteria," Garcia said. "As such, we worked closely with ABET to establish meaningful metrics. Unfortunately, we identified 22 potential metrics. No one could keep up with, or review, that many."

Following the initial review, the department began to refine these metrics according to their usefulness to students, faculty and ABET. Building on the earlier work with portfolios, Garcia and Ed Clausen, professor of chemical engineering, defined and developed an academic portfolio that met all 11 outcomes required by ABET.

"It is a great tool for advising students," explained Clausen. "It helps them to understand the relationship between courses within our curriculum and forces them to think about why they are choosing elective courses and how they fit into their overall program."

Students begin their academic portfolio their freshman year in the introductory lab course. It is also reviewed in the two subsequent lab courses (junior and senior years), the professional practice seminar (sophomore year) and the capstone design courses (senior year). Students submit the portfolio at mid-term and then meet individually with their instructor to evaluate it.

"The academic portfolio is an excellent advising tool," Clausen added. "Students are encouraged to take it with them when they are preparing their schedules or seeking advice. It gives advisors a lot more to go on when making recommendations."

Substantial classroom and individual instruction time is devoted to explaining the various components of the portfolio. Academic portfolios contain a mission statement and resume, which change over time. Students are asked to retain all versions of these documents in their portfolio.

Other components include a statement of educational objective, a working copy of the transcript and running lists of extracurricular activities and honors and awards. With these lists, students are asked to provide a one or two sentence description of why they chose that activity or received the award.

The most significant parts of the academic portfolio are the employment narratives and the coursework summaries. Students are required to prepare a one-page narrative for each job they have had, which includes the employer and duration of employment, why they sought that job, what they actually did on the job and their assessment of what they learned from it.

Students are also required to prepare a narrative of no more than one page for each course they have taken in college. This narrative includes what they covered in the course, why they took the course, what they learned and how it relates to their other coursework.

The final component of the academic portfolio is the employment portfolio. During the sophomore-level professional practices course, students are taught how to draw material from their academic portfolio and prepare an employment portfolio suitable for use in a job search. This employment portfolio is then appended as a part of the academic portfolio.

The employment portfolio contains a resume, narratives on education and work experience, details of honors and activities that pertain to the job search and a five-year plan that discusses their life-long learning plan and early career aspirations. It is used for seeking co-operative education and summer internship opportunities, as well as in the final professional job search.