Build something real this summer. Get hired later.
The Gonzaga Portfolio Competition gives you a deadline, a reason, and real recognition. But the thing you keep is the portfolio, the GitHub skills, and the story you will tell in every interview that follows.
What This Is
The Gonzaga Portfolio Competition is a summer project for Gonzaga students to build and publish a real personal portfolio, on their own terms, on their own timeline, using real tools.
You build over the summer. You publish it online using GitHub Pages. You submit the URL at the start of fall semester. A team reviews it. Winners are recognized. Everyone walks away with something more valuable than a trophy.
There are four award categories — business, personal, design, and problem solving — spanning professional work, passion projects, design craft, and things you build that actually run. Whether you have an internship this summer or not, there is a category for what you can build.
This is not extra credit. It is not a class requirement. It is an optional challenge for students who want to use the structure of a competition to push themselves to build something they will actually be proud of.
This competition is housed in the School of Business Administration Information Systems Department and is open to all Gonzaga students.
Why This Matters
The trophy is secondary. Here is what you are actually building.
Work you can show
A portfolio that is live on the internet
Not a PDF sitting in a folder. Not a PowerPoint you emailed to a professor. A real URL with your name on it, visible to anyone: recruiters, hiring managers, future colleagues. That is a different kind of artifact.
Receipts of your work
A GitHub account with actual commits
GitHub is the professional standard for version control. After this summer, you will have a profile that shows real activity: real commits, real files pushed, real history. That is infrastructure for the rest of your career, built in a single summer.
Credibility
An interview story you can tell
When an interviewer asks you to describe a project you drove yourself, you will have a specific, honest answer with a public URL to back it up. I was given general direction, no template, and I figured it out. Employers love that story.
Clarity
Getting to know who you are and what you do
Building a portfolio forces you to answer a genuinely hard question: What do I actually want to show people? Most students do not know the answer until they try to build it. The process of figuring that out is its own education.
Four Categories
Submit in one category, or build a portfolio strong enough to compete in several.
Category 01
Business
Internship work, client projects, professional deliverables. Work done in a real organizational context, with real stakes and real results.
Category 02
Personal
Passion projects, side interests, who you are beyond a résumé. A portfolio that reveals personality and range, not just credentials.
Category 03
Design
Visual craft: typography, hierarchy, layout, user experience. Design as communication, not decoration.
Category 04
Problem Solving
It does something functionally. A project that actually works — tackles a real, hard problem and shows it running, not just described.
Timeline
Now
Competition Opens
Set up your tools, pick a direction, and start building. There is no formal check-in. Just you and the work.
Summer
Build & Publish
Work at your own pace. Commit often. Your GitHub history is part of the story.
Deadline: Aug 24, 2026
Submissions Due
Submit your live portfolio URL through the submission form by 11:59pm Pacific on August 24, 2026.
Fall Semester
Review & Celebrate
A team reviews entries. Winners are announced at a celebratory event shortly after the deadline.
The Pedagogy Behind This Competition
Every choice in how this competition is structured is intentional. Here is why.
No template
You figure out what a portfolio should look like. That research process, finding examples, making decisions, understanding why things work, that is the learning. A template skips it.
Minimal instructions
Employers do not hand you a step by step guide for real work. They hand you a problem and see what you do with it. This competition asks the same thing. Ambiguity is a feature, not a bug.
GitHub as the platform
We could have used Wix or Squarespace. We did not. GitHub is the professional standard, and you will leave with a real artifact and a real skill. The friction is the point.
AI tools are allowed and encouraged
AI amplifies the work you put in. If you put in good thinking, AI helps you execute it faster and better. If you put in nothing, AI produces nothing worth submitting. The thinking is still yours.
You do not have to figure this out alone. Start a free chat at claude.ai and use it as your guide through VS Code setup and everyday use — the free version can even help you find free tools to pair with VS Code. Other capable assistants work too. It is enough to get through this independently. See how on the Setup page →
What to Do Next
Two paths. Pick the one that fits where you are right now.
Set Up Your Tools
New to GitHub and VS Code? Start here. This page walks you from "I have a laptop" to "my portfolio is live on the internet," step by step, with zero experience assumed.
Set Up Tools →Understand the Process
Already have your tools set up? Head to the Process page for guidance on what to build, how to think about your portfolio, and answers to the questions you will actually have.
Read the Guide →