Students Create Award-Winning ePortfolios Demonstrating Career Readiness

University of Arkansas students are showcasing their career readiness through award-winning professional ePortfolios. The bi-annual ePortfolio contest recognizes students who effectively articulate their skills, experiences, and professional identities through thoughtfully designed digital portfolios.

Student work was evaluated by judges that included a university career specialist, a university alum, and one of last year's contest winners. Winners will receive a certificate of recognition and may choose to have their ePortfolio featured on portfolio.uark.edu, the official University of Arkansas portfolio site.

This year's winners are as follows:

Emma Grace Beard

First Place
Broadcast Journalism and Advertising/Public Relations
"My favorite part of my ePortfolio is how my featured work and my 'Roots and Resilience' story work together to show who I am both personally and professionally. It reflects where I come from, how much I've grown, and how intentional I've been about building my confidence, involvement, and future.

Creating my portfolio truly helped me realize that all effort, even the little things, truly pay off! Putting my experiences, accomplishments, and growth into one place forced me to slow down and really reflect on how much I've done in college. Seeing this showed me that I am more confident and career-ready than I often realize. It helped me start viewing myself as a professional, not just a student preparing to be one."

Go to Beard's portfolio here

Kalyx Aikin

Second Place
Communication
"My favorite part of my portfolio is the 'my purpose' section. I learned just how much my personal experiences and passions apply to being a team player in a professional setting."
(private portfolio link)

Lucy Schram

Third Place
Psychology
 "At the start of the semester, I would sit in front of my computer for hours and say the sentence "ugh, who even am I" to my roommates over and over again until I could finally put into words what I was trying to say. Now, at the end of the semester, I know the answer to that question. One of the biggest things that I learned about myself is that I was already a well-rounded professional; I just needed help seeing it."

Go to Schram's portfolio here

Marshall Deree

Fouth Place
Journalism
"My favorite part of my ePortfolio is the 'about me' page that I wrote. I think that it really shows who I am and why I am interested in a career in journalism, but also highlights my talents and vision in a way that would appeal to employers. It covers much of my life in a unique way that sets me apart from other people in my field. Many other students will graduate with similar or better journalism experience than me, but only I have my life experience. I think that employers will see my passion and devotion to journalistic storytelling in my life story."

Go to Deree's portfolio here

Students created their portfolios in both online and on-campus sections of the Professional ePortfolio course. This Fulbright College course is open to all students and guides them in building a career-focused website that helps them to find their professional voice and clearly communicate what they have learned in college.

Research supports the value of this work. The International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning identifies portfolios as a key strategy for producing "job-ready" graduates, while the International Journal of ePortfolio reports that creating a career portfolio not only helps students demonstrate learning but also better prepares them for job interviews because it helps them consider what they have to offer.

Lynn Meade, teaching associate professor, emphasized the reflective nature of the process. "Building a portfolio is a reflective journey that asks students to think deeply about what they have learned in college and how those experiences have shaped them," Meade said. "In the process, students are not only documenting their work — they are actively forming their professional identities. I am incredibly proud of this year's winners and the intentional, high-quality portfolios they created. These portfolios will serve them well as they move confidently into their next professional steps."

For more information about ePortfolios at the University of Arkansas, visit portfolio.uark.edu.