In December 2021, I attended a virtual professional development drive-in hosted by my professional organization, TEXAAN, titled Advising a life long profession: Proactively planning and investing in career growth and development. One of the sessions hosted during the webinar was titled Building your personalized advising portfolio by Sarah B. Sanche. Little did I realize, but less than a month later, I would finally take the leap of faith to embark upon my project-based learning graduate program and would be building my own ePortfolio.
I am finding her suggestions very valuable and inline with our goals here in the ADL program. She suggests the following (some paraphrased):
- Find a notebook and pen of your choosing (or in our case create a wordpress blog)
- Write down thoughts 3-4 times per week
- Write about the day
- After a month, go back and review previous writings
- Continue with the routine for 6 months and evaluate the content of your writing
- Connect with others
- Stay dedicated to the reflection process…
In her presentation, Sarah Sanchez also sites a checklist from a NACADA article titled Advisor portfolio examples by Catherine Buyarski. In her article, Catherine Buyarski sites the following goals for an advising portfolio:
- To allow each advisor to document and accomplishments and contributions to students […] and the education profession;
- To define expectations for advisor performance and reinforce the priorities of [the institution and advising team];
- To encourage professional reflection and goal-setting; and
- To allow for assessment of advisor needs to provide input into [institutional] planning.
Buyarski, C. (2014). Advisor Portfolio Examples. NACADA | Clearinghouse of Academic Advising. Retrieved from https://nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Clearinghouse/View-Articles/Advisor-Portfolio-Examples.aspx
Sanchez, S. B. (2021). Building your personalized advising portfolio.
The Advisor That Cares 