Curriculum Vitae (CV)

What is a CV?

Latin for “course of life”, the curriculum vitae, also known as a CV or vita, is a comprehensive statement of your educational background, teaching, and research experience. It is the standard representation of credentials within academia.

  • The full CV is only used when applying for academic positions in four-year institutions.
  • Do not use a CV when applying to community colleges—use a teacher-focused résumé instead.
  • Tailor your CV to the specific positions to which you are applying and place more relevant sections earlier in the document.
    • For a position at a teaching-focused liberal arts college, the CV will stronlgy emphasize teaching.
    • For a positiont at a research-intensive university, the CV will accentuate research.
  • Format can vary by field, so also seek disciplinary-specific advice from advisers, professors, and others within your field.
  • There are no length restrictions for CVs.

Formatting

  • Your CV must be well organized and easy to read.
  • Choose an effective format and be consistent.
  • Use bolds, italics, underlines, and capitalization to draw attention.
  • List all relevant items in reverse chronological order in each section.
  • Strategically place the most important information near the top and/or left side of the page.
    • In general, place the name of the position, title, award, or institution on the left side of the page and associated dates on the right.
  • Use a footer with page numbers and your last name, in case pages get separated.

Describe Your Experiences

  • Articulate what you have done and take advantage of the opportunity to describe your research and teaching experiences—do more than simply list them.
  • Avoid the bland phrase “responsibilities included.” This can sound like a dull job description. Instead, use bullets to describe your activities, accomplishments, and successes.

Sections to Include

The Basic Sections

Heading: Name, email address, mailing address (only one), and phone number

Education: List academic degrees, with in progress or most recently earned first.

  • Name of institution, city and state, degree type and major, month and year degree was/will be awarded.
  • Thesis title and advisor, if applicable

Relevant experience: List positions that show off your skills and expertise. You can group experiences into relelvant categories to enhance your CV (ex: Research, Teaching, and Administration). For each position, include:

  • Title, organization name, city and state, dates position was held.
  • Bullet points that summarize your activities/duties, accomplishments, and successes. Use actions verbs.

Publications: Give bilographic citations for articles, pamphlets, chapters in books, research reports, and any other publications that you have authored or co-authored. Use the format appropriate to your particulars acacemic discipline for a clean look.

Presentations (Oral and Poster): Give titles of professional presentations, name of conference or event, dates and location and, if appropriate in your discipline, also include a brief description. Use the format appropriate to your particular academic discipline for a consistent and clean look.

Honors and Awards: Receipt of competative scholarships, fellowships, and assistantships: names of scholastic honors; teaching or research awards.

References: Three to five are appropriate. If you are responding to an advertisement that asks for references, include those requested on a seperate addendum sheet.

Optional Sections

Qualifications and Skills: A summary of particular or releveant strengths or skills which you want to highlight. Typically, this is not included as a seperate section, but addressed in other sections. Occaassionally, it may be appropriate to list special computing or language skills.

Grants Received: Include name of grant, name of granting agency, date received, and title or purpose of research project.

Institutional Service: List institutional committees you have served on, including offices held, student groups you have supervised, or special academic projects you have assisted with.

Certifications: List all relevant certifications and the year received.

Professional Associations: Membership in national, regional, state, and local professional organizations. Also, list significant appointments to positions or committees in these associations. Student membership in professional associations are appropriate.

Recent/Current Research: Description of research projects recently conducted or in progress. Include the type of research and a brief descritpion of the purpose.

Community Involvement: Appropriate and relevant volunteer work, church work, communtiy service organizations, etc.

Educational Travel: Name of countries, dates, purpose.

Examples/Templates

General: Gertie Graduate (PDF) | Gertie Graduate (Google doc)

Undergrad Social Sciences/Humanities: Coulson Culture (PDF) | Coulson Culture (Google doc)

Undergrad STEM/Health Sciences: Stacia Stem (PDF) | Stacia Stem (Google doc)

PhD Candidate Social Sciences, Humanities: Basira Bookworm (PDF) | Basira Bookworm (Google doc)

PhD Candidate Sciences, Health Sciences: Guilia Diaz (PDF), Guilia Diaz (Google doc)

Additional Resources

For more CV support, visit Purdue OWL’s website.

Resource adapted from The Graduate College of the University of Illinois. CV examples adapted from UC Davis and Columbia University.