Curriculum Vitae

[rachelmanija]

Does a CV intended to be used to apply to teach at a college level really have to be around twenty pages long?

I am coming to the horrible realization that it is going to take forever to dig up the records I need to put this damn thing together.

I hope that my really quite good professional credentials will make up for my lack of actual teaching experience here. Though everyone I've ever taught or critiqued has seemed happy with the results, I've only ever taught at one workshop, critiqued privately, and guest-lectured for one college class session and two high school sessions.

...yeah, I need to make more money. Also, I enjoy teaching.

Comments

[orzelc.livejournal.com]

The proper length of a CV will be highly dependent on the field. A Kate says, mine is currently 6 pages, and was considerably shorter when I applied for and got this job, but I was lucky enough to have a small number of high-quality publications, so I didn't need a big list with lots of padding. In fact, there are several things on the version that Kate sent you (which is from my tenure review) that I felt a little sheepish about listing.

The important thing is that you list everything relevant, and organize the information well. I've certainly gotten twenty-page CV's to read while we were hiring, but people who just indiscriminately list everything they've ever published, down to the last Usenet rant, aren't really doing themselves any favors. If I have to work to locate the last publiation in a reputable journal, I'm likely to decide that it's not worth my time.

Make sure that your education and employment history are clear and easy to follow, and sort publications in a way that makes it easy to tell what's really important-- for example, in science you would usually divide them up as "Journal Articles," "Invited Talks" and "Contributed Talks," from most to least significant. Lumping them all together (which I've seen done) just looks like padding.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Chad! Mine would be for teaching writing. I don't have a ton of credits, but several of them are fairly impressive. (Published a book, staff writer on a TV series, sold a series (in development) to the Jim Henson Company.) I think I'll go for short but substantial.