BIS 499B: Portfolio Capstone

Congratulations! You’re about to complete your bachelor’s degree. How did you get here? Where do you want to go next? This course helps you address these questions. You will focus on the connections among your courses and the links between your academic and personal accomplishments. You will create a portfolio that presents the work that you are most proud of. The development of your final portfolio begins with the four IAS core learning objectives, objectives that are essential for most, if not all, careers: critical and creative thinking; interdisciplinary research and inquiry; collaboration and shared leadership; writing and communication. This starting-point allows us to focus on how your experiences inside and outside of the classroom have advanced those learning objectives and how your accomplishments are the basis for achieving your life and career goals. A central component to the course is to consider what it means to converse with different people about your education; you will be working with students, faculty, and staff who are not intimately familiar with your area of specialization. You have the opportunity to think about and practice how to explain and frame your work and accomplishments for multiple audiences.

Learning Objectives

In IAS we encourage students to draw on a range of intellectual traditions and opportunities to pursue their goals. This great freedom comes with a need to explain what your academic accomplishments mean. This course allows you identify and explain those accomplishments as they relate to your individual strengths. By the end of the course, you will:

1. create a final portfolio that draws from your courses experiences to integrate and reflect on your undergraduate education as a whole.
2. develop skills in drawing on evidence in your portfolio to support claims about your learning to different audiences (friends, family, employers, grad school admissions committee, etc).
3. imagine your future, and how you will use your college experience to find new opportunities.

What a roller coaster this last year has been! Let’s work with each other to find grace in our learning during these difficult times.