Prof. Michele Hardesty’s Division II Portfolio Guidelines
In preparing to finish Division II, make sure you do the following:
Schedule a final meeting time with your committee, a portfolio deadline, and a retrospective essay draft deadline.
For those finishing Div II in Fall: you have the option of scheduling a pass meeting at the end of the fall semester (preferred!) during the week in December after classes end, or in the spring semester during the last week of January.
§ With your committee, schedule a deadline for the portfolio a week before the final meeting, and a deadline for the retrospective draft a week before the portfolio deadline.
Finish your CEL-2 activity, mark it as complete on The Hub and post a reflection. Make sure your sponsor has also marked the activity as completed. You cannot pass Div II until this step is done!
Submit your Division III committee request form. The deadline is the same as the Division II pass deadline, which is also the first fall Advising Day.
Build and submit a Division II e-portfolio (details below).
On The Hub: revise your Division II contract and select ALL courses you want included in Division II. Note: your committee will need to re-sign the contract to approve the changes you have made. Let us know when it is ready!
Attend a final meeting with your Div II committee to review the portfolio and discuss your next steps!
BUILDING YOUR DIV II PORTFOLIO
Gathering and curating materials:
Putting together your Div II portfolio is a process, and you should start early so you have time to do it well. The first step is to start gathering materials; you can start this process at the beginning of your final semester of Div II, if not before. Make a folder on your hard drive to gather items. Figure out what you need to download, scan, request, and make time to do those things. Some items on this list will be incomplete right now, but as you finish them, but them in your folder.
Division II contract. Include the original and the revised versions of the contract in your portfolio.
A listing of all courses (i.e. your Academic History on the Hub), all course evaluations, evaluations for special projects and internships, grades, self-evaluations. If you have special projects or internships that need to be documented with Central Records, make sure to take care of that.
Documentation of your CEL-2 activity, your reflection, and your sponsor’s evaluation.
Papers, artwork, flyers from performances, websites, videos, audio, project work, etc., that will be used to inform your committee about development, and about how you met your goals for the concentration. This work will mostly come from courses, but you may also include work from other activities if they relate to your concentration. Find coursework with faculty comments whenever possible. If you have a major project with multiple preliminary steps and drafts, include proposals/earlier draft(s). You may also gather substantial work for courses in which you did not receive a grade or evaluation, but include a note explaining the provenance of that work.
For visual, sound, and digital work, you may include a link where we can access the work. For one-of-a-kind work, whether performance or material objects: include photo or video documentation when possible. If need be, you may show us physical work for the final meeting.
Optional: Annotated bibliographies (films viewed, exhibits attended, books read, etc.) for totally independent work.
Your preliminary Division III proposal/Committee Request Form
As you are gathering items, you can start to organize them into subfolders. When you have collected all available work, decide what you will include in the portfolio. You should not include everything. Be selective, but try to include 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 back on your past two years of concentrated study. You might take notes, jot down timelines, and brainstorm key turning points as you select what materials will go into the final portfolio. This process, then, lays the foundations for you to write your retrospective essay.
Writing the retrospective essay (approx. 8-10 pages, double-spaced):
You can think of this essay as both an intellectual autobiography of your last two years, as well as a critical introduction that will guide your committee’s reading of the portfolio. Some questions to ask: What were your goals when you started Division II? How have your goals progressed/changed over the course of Division II? How have your interests developed? What challenges have you faced? What were your major turning points? How has your Division II prepared you for Division III? What are your goals for Division III?
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.) Send the draft to your chair for comments and edits.
With the second draft of the retrospective, you will be able to focus more on shape and organization. At this point you will have to decide whether you would like to organize your retro chronologically, thematically, or a blend of the two. 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.
Additional requirements for Division II
There are two requirements for Division II (for students who entered before Fall 2022), Community-Engaged Learning (CEL-2) and the Race and Power Requirement. You should address both requirements in your retrospective essay by devoting either specifics sections of your essay to each one, or separate documents. Include examples of work you did to satisfy these requirements.
Community-Engaged Learning (CEL-2)
Include a description of the CEL-2, your reflection on completing it, and your sponsor’s evaluation. Additionally, include examples of work you completed for the CEL-2 (posters, pamphlets, websites, text, event promo, video, visual work, lesson plans, etc.).
Race and Power
Include a short statement (approx. 300-500 words) on how you satisfied the Race and Power Div II requirement, Naming both the courses you took and specific papers, projects, and other work that is represented in your portfolio. Use the prompt(s) below that best fit the kinds of activities you completed for the requirement:
Prompt for Race and Power tagged 200-level course or Division II seminar/workshop
What did you know about the relationship between race and power and specific modes of knowledge production before you took the course or seminar? How did your sustained engagement of the course material affect your understanding of the ways in which race and power inform the disciplinary or interdisciplinary areas or practices explored in the course?
Prompt for Race and Power field study or independent project
How did your understanding of race and power inform your design of the field study or independent project? What resources (coursework, scholarship, advisor) did you draw upon to carry out your field study/independent project? Did the project shift or reinforce your understanding of race and power?
Putting it all together:
A sample portfolio might have these sections/folders:
Table of contents
A copy of your Academic History from The Hub
Division II contract(s)
Retrospective essay
Course evaluations and self-evaluations
Documentation of CEL-2 and the Race & Power requirement
Your curated, representative selection of work, organized in sections/folders that correspond to the organization of your retro essay: chronologically by semester, by area of study, by theme, etc.
Your preliminary Division III proposal/committee request form
Finally, assemble it all in an e-portfolio. You may build a website, or create a shared Google Drive folder with nested subfolders. If you need help making a digital portfolio, write portfolios@hampshire.edu. Send the link to your digital portfolio to your committee by your portfolio deadline.
Getting Started with Division II (including contract drafting template)
Prof. Hardesty's Portfolio & Pass Meeting Guidelines
Information from the Student Handbook on Div II
updated 8.30.24