Students typically complete the requirements of Division I in their second or third semesters.
To pass Division I, you will:
Assemble a portfolio of selected work
Write a retrospective essay
Select your 7 Div I courses on the Hub
Make sure your CEL-1 activities are documented on the Hub
Submit your portfolio and attend a pass meeting with your advisor!
The first step in assembling a portfolio is to start gathering materials. Make a folder on your hard drive to gather items. Some items on this list will be incomplete right now, but as you finish them, put them in your folder.
When you have collected all available work, decide what you will include in the portfolio. You should not include everything. You might take notes, jot down timelines, and brainstorm key turning points as you select what materials will go into the final portfolio. Be selective, and include just one piece of significant work per class and per major project.
By bringing together your materials and organizing them, you give yourself the opportunity to reflect on your first year of transdisciplinary study. This process, then, lays the foundations for you to write your retrospective essay.
Once you have your materials collected for a portfolio, you can draft and revise your retrospective essay. You can think of this essay as both an intellectual autobiography of your first year, as well as a critical introduction to the portfolio. The retrospective guidelines ask you to reflect on four areas:
Reflection on Learning: Reflect on your growth in learning this year. What skills have you gained, and what do you still want to work on? In your course evaluations, what have professors identified as your strengths and as areas to work on; and how does that fit with your own self-assessment?
Reflection on Engaging across Disciplines/Academic Areas: What are the fields and approaches you’ve explored in Division I, and how do those fields and approaches intersect? Talk about two examples of your learning this year that involved exploring intersections between or across fields (e.g., a course, project, paper, reading).
Reflection on Participating in the Campus Community (CEL-1): How did you grow as a member of the Hampshire College community this year? How did your sense of yourself in relation to others grow and change? What understanding and skills did you gain about intersectional approaches to race and power from Community Days of Learning? How did that contribute to your participation in the campus community?
Reflection on Race and Power: Please describe how you thought about race and power before enrolling at Hampshire. How has your thinking by changed about your own positionality as related to constructions of race and power? What, if any, courses, assignments, discussions, events, and activities (e.g. community days of learning, affinity spaces, learning opportunities in the residential halls) helped you to engage historical constructions of and discourses concerning race? Were you prompted to think about your own racial identity in a specific context, such as on Hampshire's campus, your neighborhood, high school, within or beyond U.S. borders? If so, please detail how.
I suggest that you plan on two rounds of writing and revision. For your first draft, focus on answering these questions, and contextualizing the work you have selected for the portfolio (you can and should refer to courses, professors, and coursework by name in the essay.)
With the second draft of the retrospective, focus more on shape and organization. In other words, you write the first draft to figure out what you want to say, and the second draft to clearly communicate what you want to say to your readers.
Your essay should be no more than 4 pages, double-spaced.
BUILDING YOUR DIV II PORTFOLIO: Putting it all together
A sample portfolio might have these sections/folders:
Table of contents
Retrospective essay, answering the 4 prompts
Course evaluations and self-evaluations
Documentation of CEL-1
Your curated, representative selection of work, organized to correspond to the organization of your retro essay
Finally, assemble it all in an e-portfolio. I recommend creating a shared Google Drive folder with nested subfolders. Alternately, you can use the ePortfolio resource here. Send the link to your digital portfolio to me by the portfolio deadline you have set.
THE PASS MEETING
We will meet individually or in a group with other Division I students for the pass meeting. Think of this meeting as an engaged conversation, not an exam! We will talk about your essay and portfolio, and your next steps. This meeting is important—put it in your calendar and arrive on time! We will schedule 30 minutes.
That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions.
updated August 29, 2024