Students begin their academic portfolio their freshman year in the introductory lab course. Students submit the portfolio at mid-term and then meet individually with their instructor to evaluate it. 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.