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Preparing Your Curriculum Vitae

2002; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/00005176-200204000-00008

1536-4801

Kim E. Barrett,

Health and Medical Research Impacts

This article summarizes a presentation made in the workshop “Transition from trainee to successful academic clinician: tips, strategies and sage council from those who have traveled the path before you!” organized by Phil Sherman (Toronto) and Cheryl Gariepy (Michigan) for the 2001 meeting of the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, held in Orlando, Florida. The goal of the workshop was to provide insights into academic survival strategies for pediatric gastroenterologists and basic scientists just beginning academic careers. Although I cannot claim to be a sage, my brief was to discuss pointers that might be useful to someone preparing an academic curriculum vitae for the first time. My qualifications to address this topic, I believe, derive from many years of service in reviewing academic accomplishments in several settings: as a grant reviewer for career development awards, as chair of my departmental Committee on Appointments and Promotions, as a participant in formal and informal mentoring programs, and as the frequent recipient of requests to write letters of evaluation for individuals being considered for promotion at other institutions. As I prepared my presentation, I thought that everything I wrote was simply common sense. However, the lively discussion that ensued after the presentation convinced me of the need for guidance in this area, and so I allowed Phil Sherman to persuade me to summarize my comments for a wider audience in these pages. My only disclaimer is that the opinions expressed are wholly my own. I caution the reader to supplement these guidelines with “local” instructions from a trusted mentor. WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE CURRICULUM VITAE IN ACADEMIC LIFE? In medicine and medical research, more than in almost any other career, the curriculum vitae serves as the formal record of one's progress up the academic ladder. Therefore, it is critical that this document be complete, presenting all the responsibilities and accomplishments of the faculty member in the best possible light. In most institutions, the curriculum vitae is the centerpiece of the academic review process and will be scrutinized thoroughly by grey-haired reviewers, both internal and external. In addition, the curriculum vitae can serve as a tool for self-assessment, not to mention a source of positive encouragement when things are not going according to plan. There is something immensely satisfying about seeing pages of accomplishments accumulating in the filing cabinet. As an aside, when it comes to academic curricula vitae, less is most certainly not more—the one-page resume with bulleted lists of action verbs so beloved in business school has no place here. Finally, you need a curriculum vitae because you will be asked for it frequently—for job applications, speaking invitations, and introductions even in your own department. To avoid missing academic opportunities, this document must be up to date and ready to go. GETTING STARTED A good place to start in preparing your academic curriculum vitae is an informal consultation with the person in your department responsible for the academic review process. It is never too early to make sure that this person knows who you are and is on your side. Ask him or her whether your institution has a required curriculum vitae format. As a junior faculty member, you probably do not have an army of secretaries working for you, and having a template will prevent you from creating a document unacceptable to your department. Another way to start formatting your curriculum vitae is to ask more senior colleagues for samples. Ask the most organized person in your division for a copy of his or her current curriculum vitae. The individual will be flattered, and you will have an excellent template. Finally, a few words are in order about style. Times are changing, but they do not change as fast in academia as in the halls of commerce. Therefore, be conservative. Your academic curriculum vitae is not the place to employ fancy paper, multiple colors, spiffy fonts, embedded photographs, or other desktop publishing marvels. All you need is a clearly laid out, black and white document with sensible headings that allows the reader easy access to the needed information. ELEMENTS OF A CAREFULLY CONSTRUCTED CURRICULUM VITAE Table 1 provides a list of the basic elements included in most academic curricula vitae. Each of these is discussed in greater detail below.TABLE 1: Elements of the academic curriculum vitaeDemographic Information You should include items such as your date and place of birth, your citizenship and (if relevant) visa status, and perhaps your marital status and the number and ages of your children. Setting aside political correctness and age discrimination, the reader will want to frame the assessment of your accomplishments within the context of the time you have had available to make them. This section should also include details of your postsecondary education together with degrees earned, licensures obtained, and a chronological listing of your employment after medical or graduate school, with position titles and dates. It is appropriate to include your administrative titles and your academic titles in this section. Just don't go overboard and list every informal job you have had since kindergarten. Research Interests and Research Support If investigation is an important part of your work, a few terse statements about your major research interests are appropriate in the “front matter” of your curriculum vitae. These statements take only a line or two and should not try to describe every detail of your research program. A rule of thumb in judging these is whether they stand the test of time. If you have to rewrite these statements every month, you have the trees rather than the forest. For example, “Mechanisms of intestinal secretion” is infinitely preferable to “Investigation of the roles played by mitogen-activated protein kinases, protein kinase C isoforms, ErbB family receptors and their ligands, phosphatidylinositide metabolism, receptor crosstalk, purinergic agonists, and PI-3 kinase in regulating chloride secretory properties, barrier function, growth and differentiation, and signal transduction events in intestinal epithelial cells.” Think of these statements as analogous to the global specific aims of a grant application that advertise its general direction, and let the titles of your published work convey the details. Faculty with research interests should list the amounts, dates or duration, and titles of extramural and internal research awards received as the principal investigator. Early in your career, you may want to list all your research support, including individual fellowships, because this begins to establish a funding history. However, I recommend that once you have established yourself to some degree, it is better just to list the support you hold currently. In general, that is what people wish to know. Be careful about listing grants in which your role is that of a coinvestigator or collaborator. If you feel you must list these, be careful to explicitly identify the person who serves as the principal investigator. Otherwise, you risk misleading your readers, which should be scrupulously avoided. Professional Accomplishments In this section, you should list honors and awards pertinent to your professional career, such as prizes awarded for your research or teaching, and elected memberships in scholarly societies. This is probably not the place for accomplishments outside the academic sphere. It is wonderful that you are an Eagle Scout, Parent of the Year at your child's school, or an award-winning artist, but these citations should be saved for your nonacademic audiences. Possibly excepted from this rule are awards received for volunteer work in the community related to your professional expertise. For example, an award from the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America for outreach work should be included in your curriculum vitae because it provides evidence in that elusive category of “University and Public Service.” Professional Activities Your curriculum vitae should contain a comprehensive listing of all the ways you contribute to your institution and your wider medical specialty. As your list of university service grows, it is useful to break it down according to the level at which the contributions (e.g., committee service, task forces, and search committees) are made. Thus, service on a divisional education committee, for example, should be distinguished from contributions to a campus-wide group. Similarly, extramural professional activities can be broken down according to the society or other body for whom you serve. This is also a good place to include peer-review involvement, including ad hoc service as a grant reviewer, editorial board member, or study section member. For each item, include dates of service and your precise role, particularly if you were the chair or cochair of the group in question. Invited Speaking Engagements Invitations to speak at meetings and at other institutions provide evidence of your reputation outside your own institution. This is a critical criterion for advancement at most universities. It is very appropriate to highlight these activities in a separate section of your curriculum vitae. You should include the title of your presentation, to whom it was delivered, and the location and date. Be careful not to make this section redundant with your bibliography. For example, talks given at meetings on the basis of submitted abstracts should not be included here, nor should you include poster presentations. Teaching Contributions to the educational mission of your institution constitute another activity that affects promotion. Your medical school probably will have forms that track your teaching activities (including course load, contact hours, and number of students taught) that are automatically included in your promotion dossier. In many institutions, evaluations by students and trainees may also be included. However, it is a good idea for you to include at least an outline of your teaching activity in your curriculum vitae, especially for review by potential employers. This should include formal course and clerkship assignments, with course titles and dates, and a description of any role you may have played in course leadership, design, or development. Be sure to include information about tutorial and advisory services to student interns, graduate students, and thesis committees. It is probably excessive to list all of your postdoctoral trainees and fellows, unless the list contains some immediately recognizable names. Although many people do include these, it is often regarded as “padding the curriculum vitae.” Bibliography Your bibliography is the heart of your curriculum vitae. Peer-reviewed publications are the coin of the realm when it comes to getting hired, promoted, recruited, or funded. Your curriculum vitae should contain a comprehensive list of all your publications, possibly excluding abstracts. However, do not try to play games with these listings. Publications should be strictly segregated into those that have been peer reviewed and that report the results of original research, and those that have not, for example, book chapters, symposium proceedings, reviews, and letters to the editor. In fact, although some review articles are subject to peer review, I would still err on the side of listing them under the “Invited” rather than “Original” heading, no matter how scholarly a contribution they may be. This separation also serves as a useful self-check of progress. If the numbers on your invited list exceed those on the original list, you are probably agreeing to write too many book chapters! During the early years of one's career, the bibliography should also include published abstracts. Do not include abstracts printed in materials available only to meeting participants, or abstracts not accepted for presentation. As the abstract category grows, you may wish to limit the list to recent abstracts only (2 years is about right), because, presumably, the older work will subsequently have appeared in complete papers. I think it is a mistake to eliminate abstracts entirely from a curriculum vitae. Despite the inconvenience of keeping track of them, they do provide a snapshot of your most recent research directions. ITEMS THAT DO NOT BELONG ON YOUR CURRICULUM VITAE Several items, in my opinion, have no place on a formal curriculum vitae. The most important of these items is the nebulous “paper in preparation.” This term is meaningless, and may actually cause trouble. Most reviewers are highly suspicious of such promissory notes on a curriculum vitae. In any event, if you have listed your recent abstracts, these provide a more compelling and persuasive picture of your current interests. It is acceptable, however, to include “submitted” papers in your bibliography, because if requested, you could provide the reader a completed manuscript and a copy of the cover letter to the journal editor. One should not specifically identify the journal to which the paper has been submitted in the curriculum vitae itself. Do not include in your curriculum vitae exhaustive lists of your daily activities. For example, I would avoid lists of every journal for whom you have served as reviewer, every internal research seminar or lecture you have given, and every student who has ever walked into your laboratory or shadowed you on rounds. The temptation to include this information is understandable, especially if your curriculum vitae is less than weighty. However, these lists only detract from the truly important material in your curriculum vitae. HOW TO GATHER CURRICULUM VITAE ITEMS To some extent, your curriculum vitae will build itself as you progress through the academic ranks. The most important advice in this regard is to write original papers. Although this sounds simple and obvious, the reality is challenging. Of all the activities that fill our days, reducing the results of a research study to paper is one of the few without a deadline. Therefore, this critical task often is pushed aside. Resist this temptation to attend to every immediate but unimportant demand on your time. If necessary, make appointments for yourself to write and jealously guard this time. Other curriculum vitae items can be amassed proactively. For example, it is perfectly reasonable to volunteer for committee assignments in your own institution or in national organizations. For the latter, an incoming president elect or vice president is usually responsible for making committee appointments, and most will welcome your offer of assistance. Just do your homework and target committee assignments that really interest you, and to which you can make a tangible contribution. As a junior faculty member, avoid taking on commitments that are widely known as herculean tasks. Ask a senior colleague for a frank assessment of the workload involved before you volunteer. In general, it is important to learn when to say both yes and no to opportunities. CLOSING THOUGHTS Early in my career, someone told me to always keep my curriculum vitae updated. This task is not as arduous as it may seem. I keep two copies readily accessible in a desk drawer. One is a clean copy that can be photocopied in a moment if someone requests it. The other is for handwritten additions used to intermittently update the computer file. The same strategy is equally valuable these days when the curriculum vitae is often distributed as a virtual document. In this regard, it is vital to record things when you do them, rather than trying to reconstruct your life a year later. Finally, keep an updated copy of a National Institutes of Health–style Biosketch along with your curriculum vitae, so you will have one less task when you or your collaborators submit a grant proposal. Perhaps my most important advice to the budding academician is to resist the temptation to pad and obfuscate. Do not make generic lists of publications that mix invited articles and abstracts with the “real thing.” Do not list every mentored student, every tangential activity, and every paper “in preparation.” An experienced reviewer of academic files will always detect such subterfuge and may consequently view your curriculum vitae with frustration and impatience. Finally, keep the process in perspective. At the end of the day, no matter how important your curriculum vitae may seem, its length is not the only indicator of your worth as a human being. It is fine to pay attention to your curriculum vitae and its contents, but not if it means missing your child's soccer game, missing good times with those important to you, or just missing the sweet smell of the roses. Good luck!