Faculty Portfolios: An Essential Part of Promotion

Faculty Portfolios:  An Essential Part of Promotion

You have probably heard about developing your professional faculty portfolio from the time you set foot on campus! The portfolio is a professional document that outlines your accomplishments in teaching, research, service, and professional development. It showcases your progress in your professional goals over time, your value to the institution and your readiness for promotion and tenure. 

Best Practice Guidelines

• Creating a strong faculty portfolio is essential for academic promotion. It requires careful planning, time, and effort to make sure that all the necessary and relevant information and artifacts are included and presented in an organized fashion. 
• Examples of common e-portfolios include Digication, Squarespace and Blackboard Portfolio that is part of the learning management system.
• Online digitized portfolios are the preferred method of gathering and presenting your information, though hard copy portfolios are acceptable and can be creatively organized using a three-ring binder, scrapbook. Most universities offer digitized templates that require you to follow along and complete pre-determined portfolio requirements and documentation. 
• Artifacts can be easily uploaded in digital portfolios to demonstrate your experience and accomplishments in a given area.

Preparing Your Promotion Portfolio-3 Essential Steps to Follow

• Locate and follow your institution’s guidelines for the faculty portfolio. These can usually be found in the faculty handbook.
• Ask to see a colleague’s portfolio who has been promoted at your university.
• Gather the materials that you will be uploading to your portfolio. Although each institution will have it’s own requirements, the major categories are listed below. Once you have your materials together organize them into the various categories as follows:
  • Teaching
  • Research/Scholarship
  • Service
  • Professional Development

Strategies for Creating an Effective Portfolio by Category

Teaching

Develop a teaching statement that includes referenced theories and philosophies as well as your experiences teaching students at your university.  In keeping with your theoretical and personal traits of teaching, how do you set up the classroom, the syllabus, assignments, and promote student inclusion, participation and success?  

Teaching Artifacts: syllabi of the courses you have taught * student assignment examples (used with permission)* a summary document of student evaluations*  Pictures, videos, or qualitative feedback about your teaching or the student learning.

Research and Scholarship

Many universities are utilizing Boyer’s Model of Scholarship (Boyer, 1990) to allow all faculty members (not just those on a tenure track) to get credit for scholarly work they have completed.  This is especially popular with clinical faculty who are non-tenured and universities where the primary goal is teaching not research.  The American Occupational Therapy Association (2022) has developed an official document of occupational therapy scholarship which can be accessed here AOTA OT Scholarship Document

Scholarship Artifacts: copy of published articles from journal*copy of presentation flyer and powerpoint* copy of poster presentation *book chapters

Service 

Service includes any volunteer positions or time you have spent in service for the profession, university, program, or community you work in.  These requirements may be different as you advance in your academic standing (assistant to associate professor) and years spent teaching and in the academic environment. 

• Service to the profession may include becoming a member of the local conference committee, serving on a national committee of the OT profession, or organizing a local education program to promote the OT profession.
• Service to the university may include serving on a committee to advance educational policy, admissions and enrollment, or financial advancement of the university through alumni networking or grant writing, leading an interdepartmental book club.
• Service to the program may include developing student extra-curricular activities, developing a new course elective, serving on program committees such as progression and retention, admissions, graduation, or student support.
• Service to the community may include developing service-learning programs for students with local agencies or projects, developing OT educational programs to promote the health and wellness of community members, healthcare workers, and families of clients we serve.

Service Artifacts: Summary of all service activities to date organized by type of service. Certificates of participation from committee chairs, program outlines and summary of attendance, summary of outcomes of programs completed, new course outlines,

Professional Development

Attendance at university sponsored faculty and professional development, attendance at professional conferences, graduate level course work, certifications in areas of clinical expertise or faculty teaching and learning, acquisition of educational badges or mini badges.

Professional Development Artifacts: Summary of professional development and overall learning and growth from attendance. Certificates of attendance or participation with date, name of course, and number of CEU’s or PDU’s awarded for the course.  

Creativity

Faculty portfolios may honor your creative self-expression, but must follow the guidelines of your institution.  Sometimes faculty may have leeway in color scheme, the number of pictures loaded and the type of headshot you may post on your portfolio.  All of these factors depend on whether the portfolio will be a public or private and located within the university domain.  Remember the goal of your portfolio. If it is for promotion and tenure, it may be more academic and structured. For personal use and demonstrating your uniqueness you may choose another type of template for your portfolio to disseminate to other venues.   

References

American Occupational Therapy Association. (2022). Scholarship in occupational therapy. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 76(Suppl. 3), 7613410100. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2022.76S3011

Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professorship.  Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Princeton University Press. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED326149.pdf