The C.V. Doctor: C.V. For a Faculty Member in the Humanities

This candidate writes that, while he is interested in teaching at research institutions, he would also consider working at a small, liberal-arts college in the right setting. But his CV, he admits, "reveals an obvious research/publishing bent. Do you think this may hamper my chances with smaller schools that might be skeptical about my desire to stay there long-term?" This is a reasonable concern, and it's probably a good idea for this candidate to have two versions of the CV, one for research institutions and one for liberal-arts colleges. Many four-year colleges want to hire excellent teachers who are also fine researchers, so the presence of research is not a problem, but the absence of detail about teaching might be taken as a relative lack of interest. The corrective is easy, and we offer some suggestions in the footnotes.

-- Mary Morris Heiberger and Julia Miller Vick

Examples:

• C.V. for a dean
• C.V. for a community-college instructor
• C.V. for a Ph.D. in the social sciences
• C.V. for a Ph.D. in the sciences

1.) We have a few minor suggestions here. Don't use parentheses around dates. The year in which a candidate received his degree is of interest, not something to be minimized. Now that more than a year has passed since the degree was conferred, it is probably a good idea to remove the month. In addition, the titles of the dissertation and the master's thesis could be italicized to add some visual interest. And the use of a bold typeface for the degrees and the institutions would add some visual interest but is certainly optional.

2.) For a CV aimed at teaching-intensive colleges, the candidate needs to expand this section. For each position, he could provide information about the courses he developed. Besides listing the course names and subjects, it is also helpful for the CV to offer brief descriptions that demonstrate what the candidate did to make the course viable or unique. Here's a sample description: "Taught undergraduates to consider the variety of ways [subject matter] is defined. Developed group research assignments and helped students to organize discussion groups."

3.) Again, remove the parentheses and separate dates from the names of institutions with a comma. The candidate should also include the location of each campus (city and state).

4.) For a vita that highlights teaching, it would be useful to add a "Teaching Interests" section, which would be a list of the courses the candidate can teach.

5.) For a CV aimed at research institutions, a "Research Interests" section is optional. It would be much more highly focused than a list of "Teaching Interests."

6.) This candidate has a significant amount of research and so has separate sections for "Publications," "Presentations and Papers," and "Book Reviews." For candidates with less published and presented scholarship it would make sense to offer all of this information under one section called "Publications and Presentations."

7.) The CV indicates that the candidate has been involved with an Internet project. It would be nice to have some details. Knowing what the work entailed might be helpful to a department that is looking for someone with more-than-the usual Internet expertise. In addition, on a teaching-focused CV, the candidate might mention under "Teaching Interests" that he has the Web-development skills to incorporate the Internet in teaching. If he's already developed a Web site in connection with a course he's taught, it would be a good idea to provide the URL along with the description of the course.