Two significant historically black colleges and universities (“HBCUs”) Morehouse College and Spelman College, took an innovative step forward to assist students in their career initiatives. A new partnership between the two institutions and Portfolium, an e-portfolio platform, paves the way for students to increase their awareness and amplify organization of the skill sets and unique projects they have successfully completed throughout their college experiences.
Bridget Baggett, MBA, MHA | Director of Career Planning & Placement at Morehouse explains the strategic partnership and its overarching benefits to HBCU students. “I want our students not only to graduate with a degree but to be able to shape and enhance their skill set through experiences that may go undocumented on a resume.” The partnership with Morehouse and Spelman offers students the chance to be more marketable in an increasingly saturated marketplace of graduating students and employers. Portfolium accomplishes this objective by giving students the opportunity to showcase their learned skills in a visual way, providing the groundwork for connection with their peers, potential employers, and their own individual or group accomplishments over time.
Baggett explains, “Portfolium will allow students to paint a picture of their academic and professional experiences, leveraging in and out of classroom assignments, club or association affiliations, collaborative projects, and community service in a way that they can tell their stories to future employers.” Enhancing career services initiatives is the foremost priority for HBCUs like Spelman and Morehouse as it offers students a necessary understanding of the bigger picture, beyond just their brief college experience. Every activity, academic or professional, matters on the path toward students’ ultimate goals, whether that’s gaining full-time employment, starting graduate school, or launching a business. Portfolium’s technology-based e-portfolio platform affords students the chance to understand where they’ve been, and potentially, where they are headed based on their array of achievements.
Morehouse College, an Atlanta-based HBCU, currently enrolls more than 2,000 undergraduate students in a variety of academic degree programs. Similarly, Spelman College, also located in Atlanta, is home to more than 2,000 students focused on advancing their education. Both HBCU’s plan to work closely with Portfolium to move career initiatives forward for their respective students in the upcoming months.
Portfolium delivers free e-portfolio services to more than 5 million students and recent graduates, in an effort to shift away from the traditional resume and other proxies of ability. In addition to allowing users to add skills, experiences, and academic or community achievements to a visual display, Portfolium is the only tool that indexes all of the hard to measure skills and experiences and automatically matches to job criteria for employers. “We are very proud to provide access to the HBCU students and prove to employers the soft and hard skills they’re acquiring from their amazing curriculum and programs to be then matched to employer’s needs in TalentMatch [1],” says Troy Markowitz, VP Partnerships at Portfolium.
Baggett adds, “This platform allows students to become aware of not only what employers are looking for… but also how they compare or measure up to other students.” The addition of Portfolium to HBCU career initiatives is a step in the right direction toward bridging the gap between students, their big picture goals, and the employers that can catapult them forward.
Material from a press release was used in this report.