This week’s seminar (the final seminar of fall quarter) will be devoted to peer review of your draft Academic Statement.

• Bring 4 double-spaced copies of your draft Academic Statement.
• You will need 3 copies for the in-class peer review.
• You will submit 1 copy for faculty review; faculty will look for evidence of completion and engagement.

At the Week 8 All-Program Check-In, we discussed the following slides: Week 9 Seminar Prep. Some essential elements from those slides are excerpted below:

“The Academic Statement is a narrative introduction to your overall transcript. You write about where you’ve been and where you’re going at Evergreen, describing your undergraduate studies as a whole. Reflective writing is a great way to understand what you’ve learned and to discover what you want to learn.” (modified from http://evergreen.edu/academicstatement/)

The primary goal of your Academic Statement is to make sense of your academic trajectory:

• For all of you, particularly those in your final year at Evergreen, this will involve framing your past work (highlighting certain elements, minimizing others) to reveal the sense of (or impose sense on) that work. Your writing about your work should reflect the knowledge, skills, abilities, and epiphanies that you have achieved/experienced.
• For all of you, particularly those in the early or middle parts of your Evergreen education, it should also involve making thoughtful and informed choices about what it makes sense to do next, and how best to prepare for that. Your planned academic moves should support the high-level learning goals you have been developing this quarter (and in your previous work).

There are many narrative strategies, writing styles, genres, etc. that could work for your Academic Statement. Those choices are up to you. Faculty will only ask “Does it read well?” and “Does it describe your work?”.

However, your Academic Statement will be well-served with:

• a clear introduction,
• a clear conclusion, and
• clear body paragraphs.

Depending on where you are in your academic trajectory (early, middle, near graduation), you will want to emphasize different things:

• For those of you who are closer to graduation, this might involve framing your past and current work to make sense of that work for an outside audience.
• For those of you with more time left in your undergraduate careers, you will want to describe a potential Academic Plan, Map, or Dream and how to make progress in following/achieving it.

While only the final version that is included in your transcript has the 750 word limit, you should also try to limit the length of your interim version.

Below is a brief summary of related program activities designed in part to help you reflect and write about your education:

• You completed a summer Student Survey, which included questions on why you chose Matter and Motion and your educational goals and any long term career goals.
• In our Week 1 Seminar, we discussed Cronon’s Only Connect, which provided one articulation of what it might mean to be broadly educated in the liberal arts tradition.
• Our Week 2 Seminar provided an opportunity to learn how a large and established professional community thinks about education in a particular discipline and its connections to other areas by having you read selections from the Curriculum Guide to Majors in the Mathematical Sciences.
• In Week 4, we participated in a cross-program potluck lunch mixer with students from the introductory program Matter and Motion, where you had the opportunity to talk with them and each other about your academic plans, experiences, and opportunities.
• In preparation for our Week 4 Seminar, you read some learning goals that were physics-specific and drafted your own account of what it means to be an educated person in your area of study.
• In preparation for our Week 5 Seminar, you summarized your previous learning. During an in-class workshop activity, you then took a forward-looking vision.