RAPPORT
Volume 3 Issue 1 (2018)
and activities, assessment results, and
student feedback for this course, which
has just completed its third year.
Manhattanville alumna Michaela Muckell,
[BA‘17 MAT‘18] will share a student’s
perspective on how the course helped
her draw connections between her
experiences while an undergraduate and
the career she plans to pursue. Michaela
was in the second cohort of the course,
which was first offered in the spring of
2016.
Background
Founded in 1841 by the Religious of the
Sacred Heart as an academy for girls in
New York City, Manhattanville was
chartered to grant Bachelor’s degrees
just over 100 years ago, in 1917. It
moved from the Manhattanville
neighbourhood in West Harlem to its
suburban Purchase campus in 1952.
Today, Manhattanville is a small,
coeducational, non-denominational
college in the liberal arts tradition with
just under 3000 students in total.
Graduate programs are focused in our
School of Education and School of
Business but also include a Master of
Fine Arts in Creative Writing housed in
our School of Arts and Sciences. At the
undergraduate level, we have a very
diverse student body, with many first-
generation college students. Most
students and their families are very
interested in how students will make the
transition from college to career.
Manhattanville was a pioneer of
evidence-based education, introducing
the portfolio as a degree requirement as
part of the “Manhattanville Plan”
introduced in 1973 (Manhattanville
College, 1973). Initially, we had no
general education requirements; rather,
students used their portfolios to propose
a plan of study that would have both
depth and breadth – a major, minor and
third area – and to demonstrate
competence in critical reasoning,
quantitative reasoning, and research
using bibliographic method. All full-time
undergraduates were required to submit
their portfolios twice during their college
careers – as second-semester
sophomores (second year students),
when they declared their majors, and as
first-semester seniors as they prepared
to graduate. This system remained in
place, though by the late 1980s the
“creative ambiguity” of the portfolio
requirements gave way to lists of
distribution requirements and courses
designed to fulfill various competencies.
As these changes occurred, students lost
a sense of ownership.
Our initial foray into ePortfolios, which
began with our participation in LaGuardia
Community College’s Making
Connections grant in 2010-11, focused
on simply transitioning our paper portfolio
system to a digital one. We believed the
new format alone would re-engage
students. During this period, we were
lucky enough to be part of a second, this
time three-year, grant through LaGuardia
– the Connect to Learning project that
built the Catalyst for Learning website. 1
This provided guidance, allowed our
small faculty team of four to engage with
leaders from 23 other schools in the
ePortfolio community of practice, and
made true believers of us (Carson,
Dehne & Hannum, in press).
1
Catalyst for Learning: ePortfolio Resources and
Research is found at http://c2l.mcnrc.org/
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