Recently in Excellence in Communication Certificate Category

The Excellence in Communication Certificate (ECC) recognizes Liberal Arts students who demonstrate superior skill in various types of communication (oral, written, visual, and electronic). Throughout their undergraduate career, Liberal Arts students can collect their essays, research papers, speeches, visual designs, electronic media, or creative writing that might be revised and perfected to include as components of an e-portfolio, which students submit for evaluation to earn the ECC. Students who earn the Excellence in Communication Certificate will emerge as versatile communicators who know how to engage a variety of audiences, write with precision and style, think with complexity and maturity, speak with passion and originality, employ fully the possibilities of electronic media, and conduct themselves as communicators with honesty and compassion.

Completion of the ECC fulfills the Paterno Fellows Communication requirement.

Important Update: The deadline for the Excellence in Communication Certificate has been extended to Monday, April 15, for students who intend to complete portfolios this semester.

Don't miss your chance to earn this credential. The best part is receiving helpful feedback on your e-portfolio, which is a wonderful addition to graduate, internship, and job applications. Contact your ECC adviser or ECC Director Jessica O'Hara with questions.

We have two important changes to the ECC program!

The required components have been streamlined to give students more flexibility in creating their ECC e-portfolios. Check out the new required component descriptions.

We also have a slick new tech support page to help you create e-portfolios on Blogger, Wordpress, and Weebly. If you need extra help, you can visit that page to contact our "techie," who can talk you through your questions.

This semester's deadline for submitting your ECC e-portfolio is Monday, March 26. Please check in with your ECC advisor or check out the the ECC website for more information on portfolio submission.

If you haven't signed-up yet for the ECC, you should! Just visit the ECC website and complete the sign-up form. You'll soon be paired with a designated ECC advisor who will coach you through the process. The best times for Paterno Fellows to earn the ECC are spring semester of junior year or fall semester of senior year.

Students who are planning to earn the Excellence in Communication Certificate or are curious about the process should consider attending one of two information and training sessions scheduled for Monday, October 17.

12:20-1:10 PM in 203 IST Building
2:30-3:20 PM in 203 IST Building

At each session, I will be discussing a range of blog platform options, such as Weebly, Tumblir, and Blogger (all free services) as well as The Blogs at Penn State platform. I will show you examples of each platform and talk about the affordances of the sites. Though I'm not an IT expert by any means, I will show you the basics of setting up a blog on The Blogs at Penn State platform.

The deadline for the Fall 2011 ECC e-portfolio submission is November 7; March 19 is the Spring 2012 deadline.

Interested in the ECC? Sign up on the ECC website today and get the process started! It's never too early to fill out the sign-up form, and it's not too late for Seniors graduating in May if they sign up soon!

Finding it hard to get started on the Excellence in Communication Certificate? Starting this semester, getting started--and getting finished--just got easier. Now, students pursuing the ECC are paired with an advisor who will coach them through the process. The ECC Advisory Panel is comprised of faculty members in communication fields who have experience with helping students to create outstanding, memorable e-portfolios. You can even select your preferred advisor when you sign up on the ECC website.

The ECC is a wonderful credential for you to pursue, whether you need it to fulfill a communications requirement or would like to showcase your best work from your college career in a thoughtful, well-designed e-portfolio. Check out the Excellence in Communication Certificate website for more details, and complete the easy sign-up form to get paired with an advisor who can talk you through the requirements. You can also always contact me, Jessica O'Hara (jjo12@psu.edu), Director of the Excellence in Communication Certificate, if you have questions about the process.

Hello Fellows!

If you have not yet signed up for or gotten started with your portfolio for the Excellence in Communication Certificate, now is the time. Tomorrow you have a chance to set up your ECC blog and meet me, the Director of the ECC.

When: Wednesday, March 2nd, 3:45-4:45 pm
Where: Sparks 001 (basement)

It's a great chance to ask questions, wrap your head around the ECC process, and get your portfolio up and running! Even if you are semesters or years away from completing the portfolio, it is wise to familiarize yourself with PSU Blogs and create a space to store projects and papers that you might want to use in your ECC e-portfolio later on. The e-portfolio is, after all, meant to be a work-in-progress throughout your college career.

To sign up for the ECC and start receiving relevant emails, go here

To sign up for tomorrow's Blog Training, email mcs288@psu.edu

After signing up for the session, you'll need to make sure you've activated your personal web space. To do so, go to blogs.psu.edu and click the green button to sign in. The site will guide you through the process. If you don't do this, you won't be able to participate in the training.

I hope to see many of you tomorrow!

Yours,

Michelle Smith

Many of you are or soon will be contemplating creating an ePortfolio for the Excellence in Communication Certificate. (If you have not yet signed up for the ECC, do so here. Or send any questions to mcs288@psu.edu).

Whether you create the ePortfolio to fulfill your communication requirement or because you want to have an online record of your communication skills to share with potential graduate programs, law schools, or future employers, you'll need to start somewhere. As I've been meeting with juniors and seniors in the process of revising and completing their portfolios, I've clarified my own sense of what makes an excellent ePortfolio.

1.  Guiding Themes. While your essay on Eddie Murphy from your comedic writing class or your This I Believe speech on the Baltimore Orioles from LA101H might be unique examples of communication, the components in an ePortfolio should be selected to represent several guiding themes. The ePortfolio should read like a themed collection, rather than a random hodgepodge of unrelated but strong work. A sense of YOU should emerge by the end.

2.  What Makes a Strong Guiding Theme? To choose yours, think beyond your major. Instead, think about why you chose your major, what motivates you (in communication situations and beyond), and what should future employers/schools know about you? How have your ideas about communication and its place in the world (or your future career) changed over your time in college? 

3.  Flexibility. Because the simplest pieces to include may not be the best representation of your themes, flexibility is paramount. A recent student told me of her plan to use a speech from early in her college career for her audio component because it was already taped. As we talked, it became clear that this speech did not really represent her major intellectual/personal themes. We decided that, instead, she'd create an audio file to attach to a PowerPoint presentation from her thesis that she already intended to include as her visual component. The new PowerPoint-with-audio-commentary will cover both the visual and oral modes and will give a much better glimpse of her expertise in her major.

4. Forethought. Be thinking already about what might represent you well in an ePortfolio. The best portfolios will include pieces that were written with the goal of representing yourself to future (not just classroom) audiences. For example, one student wants her portfolio to demonstrate intercultural interests and thus is already planning to blog during her summer abroad. So, when you take a course in your major that requires a research paper, choose a topic that represents your passions and interests, and express to your professor your desire to write a paper that seriously engages expert sources. If you are engaging in service learning or community activism, save documents you write, archive fliers/posters you create, and record speeches/talks that you give. This evidence of your communication breadth will come in handy and will be hard to recreate after the fact.

I hope this gives you some idea of what you can be thinking about in the semesters before you create your own e-Portfolio! If you have any questions about the ECC, email mcs288@psu.edu

Yours,

Michelle Smith
ECC Director

Hello Paterno Fellows, and welcome to November!

Many of you have already been in touch with me regarding your interest in the Excellence in Communication Certificate, which is one way of fulfilling your communication requirement as well as a great opportunity in its own right! (If you haven't heard about the ECC yet, check out our newly revamped website.)

Most students who aspire to the ECC will create their e-portfolios through the Penn State blog system. This week, I am hosting our first set of blog trainings--Wednesday, November 3 from 7:00-8:30 pm and Thursday, November 4 from 5:00-6:30 pm. This week's workshops are a chance for students to create the blogs that they will shape into their e-portfolios. It's also a chance for students to ask me any questions they may have about the ECC process.

To sign up for one of our two blog trainings, EMAIL ME ASAP! (mcs288@psu.edu) Then, go to blogs.psu.edu and click the green sign-in button to register for your Penn State webspace. (You won't be able to participate in the workshop unless you have already registered, and the processing can take 24-48 hours.)

If you are interested in the ECC but are not receiving ECC-related emails from me, now is your chance to get started! Send me an email at mcs288@psu.edu, or use our online signup form.

I look forward to hearing from you soon, and to seeing many of you in just a few days.

Yours,

Michelle Smith