History of the Portfolio

The Friends World Portfolio used to be called a Journal. That is why the 1991 project was a Journal Writing Handbook of Inspiration and this is a Portfolio Resource Guidebook. The idea of the seeker keeping a journal documenting her travels comes from the Quaker (Friends) roots of our school. It used to be (and perhaps still is-- I don't know enough about it) that members of meetings would have to go away from time to time, for their own or the meeting's service in the world. They kept a journal of what they did and saw, and brought it back as a sort of report to the meeting, whose members could then comment on it, be inspired by it, or act on new knowledge.

Of course, our documentation is in a rather different format, for a different audience, for a different set of purposes and expectations. But the essential concept is the same-- documenting our work in the world in such a way that it means something to ourselves and also to others. (This is important, for not only must your advisor be able to comprehend your Portfolio, but also the accrediting bodies who grant Friends World the right to give degrees, and in the case of senior theses, an external examiner.)

The documentation, of course, depends a lot on the work, but all Friends World work starts in the Learning Plan, and (because this is a U. S. college education we're dealing with) usually divides the work up in some way to correspond to credit divisions. It is usually in written (typed) form, but variations do occur, keeping in mind the main idea of communicating your experiences to others.

Over the years, the kind of education Friends World has offered has changed since the original days in 1965. In the late sixties, we made the shift from airlifting supervised groups of students between different countries, and experimented briefly with the idea of unlimited independence of location before settling on the medium of regional Centers, where guided focus can be given to independent work done in the general area. Between then and 1991, when we joined Long Island University, there were a lot of different people with different opinions about Friends World: administrators and faculty, as well as students. The variety of Journals that came out of Friends World was, to put it mildly, considerable. At one extreme, there were Journals that read like doctoral theses, intimidating to read because you felt that you could never equal them, and there were, on the other end of the scale, Journals which were perhaps inspiring to read, but which communicated very little (occasionally consisting solely of a few gravestone rubbings or crayon drawings, to be interpreted entirely by the reader).

For this reason, we have some fairly broad guidelines for the Portfolio. These standardizations make our work consistent enough that we are accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges, and also make things a lot easier for the advisor. I must emphasize that many of these guidelines, to be found in your student handbook, are more or less as flexible as anything is in a school which emphasizes dialogue-- the main thing is to arrive at an agreement with your advisor before it comes to the point of turning in your Portfolio. He or she may just tell you that a collection of decorated napkins is fine, as long as you explain in detail not only what you are doing, but why, and what it means in the context you are working in.

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