Portfolio Overview and Directions

Portfolio for the Senior Seminar in Professional Writing

The central activity of the Senior Seminar is to construct your portfolio. It is your show piece, a collection to present to others: potential employers, graduate schools, other Professional Writing students, Professional Writing faculty, SUNY Cortland administrators, parents, and friends. At the end of the course, you will be presenting your finished portfolio to the Professional Writing faculty and students as well as any other faculty, friends, and family you would like to invite.

Portfolio will help you think about your strengths as a writer and to see the gaps in your writing. It will indicate directions you might want to pursue as a writer, and it will give you insight about what you can do with writing and what it can do for you.

In this semester, you will be assembling your portfolio collection: your best work from your professional writing courses. By the end of the semester presentation, you will submit your professional writing portfolio. It is a representative collection of a variety of genres. You will introduce each item in the collection with a description of how your piece fits one or more of the portfolio requirements below and a reflection on your composing process. Be sure your name and the title of the class in which you composed the piece appear on the reflection and on the written piece. Professional Writing majors will not receive a grade for this course without submitting a portfolio.

Main list of required contents for your portfolio

1. A paper the explicitly refers to rhetorical principles.
Likely sources for this paper include all Professional Writing assignments. Here are a few examples of appropriate selections: 1. a rhetorical analysis of a text, e.g. a speech, an advertisement, a piece of literature, a business document, or a bumper sticker; 2. a theoretical paper in which the writer demonstrates her understanding of rhetoric; 3. a paper in which the writer applies rhetorical theory to the subject matter of his minor; 4. a paper that demonstrates how discursive practices shape and are shaped by cultural forces.

2. A new media text
Likely sources for this project will be assignments from Experiments in Creative Writing or Writing in Cyberspace I and II

3. An analysis of a community's discourses
Likely sources for this paper will be assignments from any professional writing course, especially the core courses. You may also write this kind of analysis during your internship.

4. A document exemplifying a technical genre
Likely sources for this paper will be assignments from professional writing core courses or courses in business and technical writing. Examples of such documents include a set of instructions, a grant proposal, a technical report, a feasibility study, a progress report, a business plan, a public relations document, a public service announcement, and white paper.

5. A problem solving document
Likely sources for this paper will be assignments from any professional writing course, especially Technical Writing and the Internship. Technical reports or responses to scenarios will be likely texts fulfilling this requirement.

6. A collection of creative work
Likely sources will be assignments from any creative writing courses

7. An essay using sources
Likely sources for this paper will be professional writing core courses and theory courses.

8. Reviews of your work by your peers
Likely sources for this writing will be Senior Seminar

9. A final reflection, composed in Senior Seminar, and a website which students will use for their final presentations.