The University of Montana - Western

Placement (Credential) Files

Order a Placement File

A placement file consists of the professional information form (completed before student teaching) and letters of recommendation.

Professional Form

The three-page Professional Form is available on disk or by email from Career Services. You can also access the form on the “N” Drive on 'bigdawg'.

On the first page, please fill in your personal information such as name, address, major/minor, activities, and employment objective.

On the second page, please list your “special skills”, student teaching details, and prior work history.

On the third page, please list a summary of your collegiate work in alphabetical and numerical order. Elementary education majors must list all degree courses under this section. Secondary education majors must list degree field and education courses.

Save the professional form as necessary for your own usage as you will update the information in this file throughout your career, especially the address and work history sections.

Print out a hard-copy of the form, and bring or send the copy, along with a copy of the disk to the Career Services office. We can accept MS Word attachments if emailed to umwcareers@umwestern.edu or you may register online at MyInterfase.com. Do not FAX the form - it will be too “grainy” to photocopy.

Recommendations

Western provides “confidential” files, a.k.a. closed files. The confidential recommendations are collected at your request, but remain unseen by you. We also offer non-confidential files.

To request recommendations... please give Career Services a list of individuals including the position and address of the person who will write a recommendation for you - preferably your student teaching supervising teacher(s), college coordinator, principal, or head coaches whom you may have worked under. We will mail a specific recommendation form to your recommender, and have them mail that form back to us. We cannot accept letters of recommendation from you for “confidential” files!

You will need a minimum of three recommendations to establish your file, while a maximum of eight recommendations are allowed in your file. If you have more than eight recommendations and do not notify our office as to which letters should be removed, we will remove the oldest letters. You should have us update the recommendations throughout your career.

You Are Responsible For...

Transcripts - keep a copy for yourself or request them from the registrar.

Autobiographies - provide this information on your own if requested.

Resumes - include one with every district application.

Set-up Fee

A one-time set-up fee of $25 is charged to initiate your file. This fee provides you with 10 placement files mailed at no charge. After using the 10 files, each additional file is $3. You can fax a file at $1 per page. We do not charge a re-activation fee - your file will be active whenever you need it.

Ordering a Credential File

To have a placement file sent - call, fax, e-mail or write us with the following information:

Name of Administrator or Office where file is to be mailed

Name of School District

Address of School District

City/State/Zip of School District

Allow two days for Career Services to prepare and mail your file in addition to adequate mail delivery time. Placement files should be mailed to the district the same day you mail the application packet.

Updated on: 05/02/08