Shape Content and Format with the Audience in Mind

The key to creating an effective portfolio is to shape both content and format for a specific audience. Take care in selecting and organizing materials in a way that will be helpful to readers who, as members of search committees, are often deluged by application materials from hundreds of applicants. Each component should serve a specific purpose. More specifically, the examples and evidence you include in your portfolio should illustrate the approaches and methods you describe in your Teaching Philosophy Statement.

While you do not have to have a specific job or search committee in mind when you are beginning to compile your portfolio, it is essential that you anticipate and speak to the concerns of an academic search committee. Try to anticipate the questions that a search committee would want your portfolio to answer.

Ask faculty mentors, as well as graduate-student peers who have interviewed for academic positions, what they think search committees are looking for; these individuals are your best sources for learning about the expectations and issues that are particular to your field.

Consult the job advertisement and the web site of the school to which you are applying to get a sense of the school’s mission and students, and the relative importance given to teaching and research within the school and the department.

Consider compiling a “master portfolio” in a three-ring binder or file-folder system, then culling materials from the “master portfolio” to create a portfolio that is tailored for a specific position to which you are applying. Keep in mind the type of position (e.g., teaching “load,” tenure expectations) and the specific teaching responsibilities that you would expect to fulfill in that position. Rather than including a random selection of syllabi for courses you are prepared to teach, for example, if you are applying for a position at a large university, you might include three syllabi: one for an introductory undergraduate course, one for an advanced undergraduate course, and one for a graduate-level course. If you are applying for a position at a small, liberal-arts college, you might include syllabi for a required, introductory lecture or laboratory course, a course for “non-majors,” and a more advanced seminar.

Being selective is especially important when including student evaluations. If you have plenty of evaluations in your files, do NOT include all of them in your portfolio. Instead, include two or three complete sets, with brief introductions that summarize each set and reflect on how you have used the feedback to improve your effectiveness as a teacher. You should also consider attaching the course syllabus, which will provide a context for the committee as they review the evaluations. It is not necessarily a good idea to include only evaluations that are positive. Search committees understand that the best teachers do not always get unanimously positive student evaluations. They may also suspect that you purposefully excluded evaluations that were negative and thus give less weight to the evaluations than you might expect. More than showing that students “like” you, your goal in including evaluations should be to show how you use feedback to improve your methods and to think critically about how best to improve student learning.

*If you have a significant volume of documentation from the above list, consider how you can curate the information you include, while also indicating that more information is available.

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