The SASSY! portfolio is a template for ambitious and forward-thinking students to plan, organize, and present their culminating educational works. You’re currently looking at the original SASSY! portfolio, dreamed up and created by Erin Likins in the Spring 2014.

SASSY! was born out of necessity.

As a psychology student with a double minor in peace studies and (experimental) writing, most folks thought I was a Interdisciplinary student because I had so many relationships, questions, and experiences across departments. As I thought ahead about my senior year, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the Independent Study course credits I had yet to earn; I also knew I wanted them to feed into my thesis -- a topic that I was just beginning to start sounding out.

I see this growing trend in students today -- both inside Naropa, and out -- who are intersecting the boundaries of certain fields and applying others to them. Feminism, postcolonialism, and other forms of marginalization study are so much more accessible today that they’re breaking down the walls of every other field. You can find feminism meeting math and science; you can deconstruct the role of sexism in social media (and the court cases that follow). You can flush out the misogyny embedded in language itself.

Feminist values are often post-modern values:

In waking up to the age we live in -- and the increasing demand for innovation, cross-pollination, and (perhaps above all else) an entryway into the heart and soul of individual learning -- the SASSY! template presents an innovative way to showcase a student’s unique perceptions in their cross-disciplinary studies and the social engagement thereof. It localizes a foundation of academic study upon which the learner can build their future work, and embrace a radical perspective on where they’ve been.