Crafting your Curriculum Vitae (CV)
A Curriculum Vitae (CV) is a record of a faculty member’s academic journey. It is a document that many begin developing as students, and then continually make additions to and reformat over time. The candidate’s CV should follow your unit’s CV templates. Candidates preparing for promotion should consider:
- Reviewing the CV to ensure it is completely up to date and consistent with the other materials that would be included in the packet.
- Asking others (e.g., mentors, department chair) to review the CV and suggest changes.
- Candidates who have followed a non-traditional career pathway will want to make sure that their CV appropriately reflects their contributions.
- Candidates should find a way to include all scholarly products, even they may anticipate it won’t be counted towards promotion.
Self Assessment
The self-assessment is one of the most important documents in the promotion packet. It provides a narrative storyline of the faculty member’s accomplishments while in rank. The self- assessment is not meant to be a retelling of what is listed on the CV. Instead, this is the document that the faculty candidate writes to contextualize, highlight, and synthesize their significant, high-quality, and impactful accomplishments in the domains of research/scholarship, teaching, and service, ensuring that this addresses their current and potential impact to their field.
The candidate’s future plans and career trajectory should also be documented as part of the self-assessment. Note that some units also require a narrative section related to a candidate’s work on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
The suggested format for a self-assessment includes the following:
- The document should be single-spaced, a minimum of three pages, and no longer than necessary. While some self-assessments are considerably longer, if the document is too long (e.g., over ten pages), reviewers may find it difficult to digest and may not successfully identify the candidate’s most significant accomplishments.
- There should be separate sections that cover the three domains of research/scholarship, teaching, and service. In addition, candidates may want to include one or more of these additional sections: introduction/overview; equity, diversity and inclusion; national or international stature; future plans; and a summary. Some self-assessments integrate these topics into the three separate domains.
- In the research/scholarship section, topics covered should include research focus areas, research quality, funding, impact, and future plans.
- In the teaching section, topics covered should include formal teaching, informal teaching, and mentoring.
- The document is meant to be a self-reflection. It should provide context for the candidate’s accomplishments and plans going forward. Thus, it is appropriate for it to include not only successes, but also challenges faced by the candidate, how they were addressed, what was learned, and what might change moving forward