The College Writing Portfolio, or CWP, has been a Goucher tradition in various forms
for over 35 years. This current iteration affords Goucher graduates the space to reflect
on their growth as writers and the transferable, marketable writing skills and habits
they’ve learned as members of our community of writers. CWP contributes to the college’s
mission of preparing students to live lives of inquiry and creativity including a
lifelong engagement with critical and analytical thinking.
Students will submit a portfolio consisting of:
1) 10+ pages of writing that best illustrates your growth and improvement as a writer.
These 10 or more pages should come from classes you’ve taken as part of your Goucher experience and can be in the form of:
Successful multimodal work will also be accepted as a portfolio submission. We will accept one multimodal text along with an academic essay. Multimodal texts should:
This list of options is not exclusive; if you have work that doesn’t fit the above suggestions that you would like to submit, please email Charlee Sterling (charlee.sterling@qthklwl.com).
2) A Reflection Essay (2+ pages, double-spaced) that discusses why you submitted what you did, and what your work illustrates about your learning, growth and improvement as a writer.
Reflection Essays should:
* “discourse community” means the conventions, norms and practices of the community
of scholars and writers in a specific field or discipline.
The work you submit does not need to have earned a high grade: rather, it should demonstrate your skill, expertise, range and development as a writer. We will assess your reflection both globally (content, structure, organization) and locally (style, register, clarity and tone). For example, when discussing your development as a writer in a specific course or within a specific essay, please make sure to refer to that work you’ve included in your portfolio, giving specific examples from the work itself.
Portfolios are randomly assigned a reader, who will read your work and your reflection carefully, and holistically assess your reflection’s strength with respect to its:
Portfolios deemed “adequate” or “excellent” will earn CWP; portfolios that are incomplete, that have two or more of the above criteria at the level of “not yet adequate” (no clear thesis or focus, weak structure, lack of development of ideas or evidence, etc.) will not earn CWP.
Students are strongly encouraged to revise and edit their work multiple times before submission. They can make appointments with our faculty, and with tutors at the Writing Center, who are trained to work with portfolios and the CWP reflection.
Portfolios will demonstrate the following Student Learning Outcomes:
Deadline: All portfolios are now due by 11:45 pm on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, to provide you time to work on your portfolios over the summer and to allow anyone needing extra support the chance to make appointments with Writing Center tutors to review your work or to attend a CWP or Citation workshop. This new submission deadline includes:
Note: Those seniors graduating in May 2024 who have not met the CWP requirement by April 26, 2024, may petition the Associate Provost to walk at Commencement; diplomas will be mailed out once this graduation requirement is met.
Questions or concerns? Contact Charlee Sterling.