The Mathematics Portfolio

A Mathematics Portfolio is required of all mathematics majors.  Students are responsible for maintaining their own portfolios and are expected to consult with their advisers regarding the progress of their portfolios.  (You should consider keeping an electronic version as well as a hard copy.)  The portfolio will be collected during the Junior and Senior Seminars, reviewed by the Seminar instructor, and returned to the student.

The Mathematics Portfolio is designed to help students plan their undergraduate programs, document their growth and accomplishments, and ultimately make the transition from college to further study or careers.  In the portfolio, students are encouraged to assess their development as students of mathematics, to collect materials that will simplify their applications for jobs or graduate schools, to provide samples of their best work for faculty members who write letters of reference, thereby enabling them to write more informed recommendations, and to discover the coherence in the courses constituting their major.

The portfolio should include a collection of work that illustrates your accomplishments and growth at Hiram.  More than showing your understanding of the content of your courses, the work included should show off your more general abilities, such as problem-solving and written communication.  It is especially appropriate to include creative work, such as labs, papers, projects, or proofs of which you are particularly proud.

In addition to the benefits for the students, the portfolios help the Mathematics Department by giving us a sense of students’ experiences as majors, helping us to assess the usefulness and effectiveness of the mathematics program.  As a department, one of our goals is to help students grow, both in specific knowledge of mathematics and in more general abilities such as communication and problem-solving skills.  Examining a collection of portfolios over a period of years helps us to measure how well we are doing.

The portfolio should include the following items:

·        a table of contents, listing each item included in the portfolio

·        an introduction, summarizing the student’s sense of his or her development as a mathematician (with reference to specific items in the portfolio)

·        a list of courses used to fulfill the major

·        the best work from each course (one or two pieces per course)

·        any additional work that represents the student’s accomplishments and interests (such as significant papers from a course in another discipline, entries in the Mathematical Modeling Contest, a summary of a summer mathematics program or internship, etc.)

·        (Seniors) the student’s curriculum vitae or résumé.