LearningCounts vs. TESC PLA

[Jonathan Whatley]

I want to try putting together a portfolio based on my dance/entertainment industry experience & teaching dance classes. I saw that TESC isn't very open to giving credits for anything related to "physical education activity"... but I feel like my experiences relate more to gender psychology, sociology, acting, communications, marketing, sales, customer service, etc. Plus, I have documents online going back 13 years showing that I've been involved in the industry.

Artistic dance is a performing art, like theatre and music. It is physical but in higher education it's categorically very different from Physical Education. If you haven't already, you should read Steve Levicoff's article on degreeinfo about earning credit by portfolio at TESC. Now Dr. Levicoff did this in the late 1980s. Expect some of the specifics to be different. But it still provides a good high-level view of the process. He earned 20 sh in music by portfolio:

For my credit in folk guitar, I met with TESC's evaluator (a music professor at Mercer County Community College) and played a few songs on the guitar. (By the way, I also challenged voice, piano, solfeggio [sight singing], performance class, choral singing, and a few other music courses.) After a two-hour meeting with the evaluator, I walked out with 20 credits in various music subjects. (The meeting included a written exercise in which I had to develop a four-part harmony to a written melody line. Still, not bad for two hours in which all I basically had to do was play and sing. Now if only I had added a dance course. But then, the professor wasn't my type.)

Some of the knowledge I have would align with courses like:

[INDENT]Columbia University WMST BC3519 (4cr)
Emerson College IN138 (4cr)
Cal State Bakersfield Phil381 (5cr)
Metro State U of Denver WMS 3310 (5cr)
Riverside City College ADJ A10A (?cr)
Southern Oregon U GSWS417 (4cr)
U of TX El Paso WS3372 (3cr)
U of CO Boulder WMST 4300 (3cr)
U of IL at Urbana Champaign GWS478 (3-4cr)
U of IL at Urbana Champaign LAW672 (3cr)[/INDENT]

I'm pretty sure between those & few others, I could rack up at least 12 credits.

Now, here's an issue. The very first course you list is titled "Sex Work And Sex Trafficking." And there's a "Vice Operations." Maybe you're talking about a type of dance that would be treated as categorically different from the dance taught at mainstream dance conservatories and fine arts departments. That might limit how far your dance work per se might go toward portfolio credit.