The Academic Portfolio

Book excerpt: This comprehensive book focuses squarely on academic portfolios, which may prove to be the most innovative and promising faculty evaluation and development technique in years. The authors identify key issues, red flag warnings, and benchmarks for success, describing the what, why, and how of developing academic portfolios. The book includes an extensively tested step-by-step approach to creating portfolios and lists 21 possible portfolio items covering teaching, research/scholarship, and service from which faculty can choose the ones most relevant to them. The thrust of this book is unique: It provides time-tested strategies and proven advice for getting started with portfolios. It includes a research-based rubric grounded in input from 200 faculty members and department chairs from across disciplines and institutions. It examines specific guiding questions to consider when preparing every subsection of the portfolio. It presents 18 portfolio models from 16 different academic disciplines. Designed for faculty members, department chairs, deans, and members of promotion and tenure committees, all of whom are essential partners in developing successful academic portfolio programs, the book will also be useful to graduate students, especially those planning careers as faculty members.