Portfolio Project
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The Book of Fours
For well over a decade, seniors at Truman State University have been compiling Liberal Arts and Sciences Portfolios. Each portfolio contains works produced by the student over the entire duration of his or her undergraduate academic career. Students select works for inclusion in their portfolios in response to a set of specific "prompts" that ask for examples of works showing, for example, an ability to reason scientifically or an aesthetic analysis and evaluation. Although the portfolio categories have evolved over the course of time, there has always been a request for a work showing that the student has engaged in interdisciplinary thinking.
Every year in May, a group of faculty gathers to read and evaluate the senior portfolios. They read and discuss sample papers drawn from older portfolios to develop a basis for making reliable judgments about the new portfolios. Works submitted by students for Interdisciplinary Thinking are "scored" on a scale from 0 to 4, with 0 representing "no evidence of interdisciplinary thinking" and 4 representing "strong competence in interdisciplinary thinking." Until last year, each new work was read and evaluated by two faculty readers. Historically, it was rare that a work submitted for Interdisciplinary Thinking would be scored a "four" by both faculty readers. From 1997-1999, fewer than one percent of all the portfolios were judged straight "fours."
This "Book of Fours" reproduces the five best interdisciplinary works submitted by Truman seniors in the 1999-2000 academic year. The intent of this volume is to honor the students who have been successful in building intellectual bridges across traditional academic boundaries, and to serve as examples for faculty and students on a campus where interdisciplinarity is a curricular focal point. All five works herein are reproduced anonymously with the permission of the authors:
