For those of you who don’t know, this afternoon Nichols is contributing to the local communities with an afternoon of service dubbed “Bison Give Back.”

As a part of the Nichols Bicentennial celebration students and some 400 staff and faculty will participate in an afternoon of service and volunteerism to thank the local communities who have supported Nichols for the past 200 years.

Many sports teams are participating along with school-wide clubs and individual students who just want to make a difference. What makes this day even better (besides the shortened class schedule) is the social media contest that will be going on during Bison Give Back.

The contest invites all of those participating in Bison Give Back to use the hashtag #NCBisonGiveBack when they post photos of their service activity, whether it is helping clean up a community or paint a mural. The prize is a pizza party for the entire winning group; the prize will be awarded for the photo that “best captures the spirit of Bison Give Back.” Judges will include the Communications & External Relations staff and selected senior administrators.  To be eligible, photos MUST be posted to social media (Twitter, Instagram, etc.) with the hashtag #NCBisonGiveBack.

Bison Give Back is a great cause with a great reward! I encourage everyone participating in BGB to grab their phones and photograph away, but remember to use the hashtag #NCBisonGiveBack!

In the past years PDS has been using portfolios as a way to showcase students’ achievements and allow them to show potential employers all of their hard work. Sophomore PDS was based solely around the development of your portfolio. Creating a resume, cover letter and figuring out all the assignments you wanted to add were just some of the tasks you would have to do for this. Once it was completed, everything was added into a binder and presented to the class.
This year however is the first year that Nichols decided to use the iWebfolio. The iWebfolio is an online portfolio that rid the need of the binder.

When talking about it in class, a lot of students were confused on how to add and edit the documents that were going into it. However, with all the informational meetings Nichols offered and the step-by-step instructions that were given to us, it was made very clear.

In creating your iWebfolio, you first need to create an account, which Nichols gives to you. Then you have to upload or scan in all of your work that you want to showcase in your portfolio. I found that this step was a little time consuming and if you wanted it to be perfect you would be need to make sure it fits into the section you were adding it to. You also had to include a description of each piece being added and how you think it relates to the section. When adding a previous class paper, exam or assignment, you would need to add why you think you succeeded at the assignment.

Some thought it was pointless to change to the iWebfolio, but others, including myself, believe it is a smart decision. Switching to something that is so easy to use and much easier to send to a future employer is very beneficial.

Nichols offers a four-year Professional Development Seminar to help prepare yourself for life after college. At first when I heard about this class I didn’t think it was very necessary. When told about it freshman year it was all about time management and how to properly adjust to college. To my surprise, without this class I would have been completely lost. It provided me with all the skills to do well with all the classes I would be taking, along with a few pointers on how to start preparing for the real world.

Sophomore PDS is where I learned how to create a portfolio along with the proper way to compose a resume. This was very essential to me because sophomore year is when I was looking to find an internship.

I would have been so lost if I didn’t learn how to properly write a resume and cover letter. Friends of mine that go to different schools were completely embarrassed when seeing how well prepared I was and that they still had no idea what to do or even what a cover letter was.

For junior year, we are being introduced to a new type of portfolio that is done completely online. In my opinion this is one of the best tools the PDS program has come up with. Having it completely online, in my opinion, is a lot easier then carrying around the binder. Knowing I will have something completely different from the others applying for the internship will help the nerves a little bit.

In a PDS class, the topic of the importance of portfolios came up and if all the time and effort we put into them is worth it. With the examples my professor gave, I feel they are absolutely important; We need something to help us stand out from the others!  When my professor brought up that at her company a Nichols student was hired for a dream internship just because she brought her portfolio with her, a lot of students including myself quickly changed our negative opinions on this.

I can’t wait to see what else we will be learning about in the upcoming weeks!