Academic Professional Portfolio Workshop
Summer 2012

It is recommended you don’t work with a mentor from your discipline because a good portfolio must communicate across academic boundaries.  Expect at least 20 hours to create an academic professional portfolio.

"The professional portfolio workshop was an incredible opportunity. It was invaluable to have other eyes evaluate my portfolio, especially eyes from outside my discipline to ensure that my portfolio was understandable to those outside of my department. The document would have been far less concise had I not had a mentor. By completing the Academic Portfolio, I was able to better identify areas in which I needed to improve and other important documents that I needed to gather to support tenure."

Gina is available the weeks of:

• June 18
• July 9

"The Academic Professional Portfolio Workshop offers TCU faculty an opportunity to engage in peer-mentoring and reflection about their own teacher-scholar identity. Carefully outlining their own contributions to the TCU learning community the one-to-one coaching, as well as participation in collegial group conversation invites faculty to consider their successes in the areas of teaching, scholarship service and professional develop. This workshop is a great way to re-energize your passion for teaching and learning can greatly support and enhance the process towards tenure."

Melanie is available the week of:

• June 11

"Participants in the Professional Portfolio Workshop offered by TCU engage in a mentored journey through past professional accomplishments and into future plans and expectations. The mentor provides an objective perspective to facilitate the mentees highlighting of his/her contributions in teaching, scholarship, and service through a well-constructed narrative and the inclusion of relevant supporting materials. The individualized one-on-one coaching allows the mentee to focus on the goals and objective motivating the development of the portfolio. Having participated as both a mentor and mentee, I have found the experience to be invaluable."

Maria is available the weeks of:

• June 4
• June 11
• June 18

I went through the portfolio workshop as a junior faculty member with three years remaining in the tenure process. My goal with the portfolio was, at least initially, to force myself to begin compiling materials for my eventual tenure file. Upon beginning the workshop and working with my mentor, however, I realized that the portfolio was much more. The portfolio was as much for me as it was for an external audience. Completing the narrative and all its component pieces requires individuals to evaluate each portion of their career in a straightforward manner. Any statement one makes in the portfolio needs to be backed up by evidence. If you believe yourself to be a strong teacher; the portfolio requires you to demonstrate that. If your teaching evaluations have not been strong, the portfolio offers you the opportunity to explore why in a meaningful manner. Other arenas are the same -- the portfolio offers an opportunity for honest reflection. Finally, if done properly, the portfolio requires individuals to take a careful look at their immediate and future goals. Rather than discuss a wish list of sorts, the portfolio encourages you to take an assessment of where you are, what you can achieve at each phase, and how you are going to do it.

In working with mentees in subsequent summers, I have gained additional insight in what it means to be a successful professor, learning lessons from those with whom I have worked. The portfolio I created did make creating my tenure file far easier, but more important to me was the opportunity to meaningfully reflect on who I was as a professor.

Eric is available the weeks of:

• July 30
• August 6