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.

We’ve created a CV example for those looking to craft one without specific style rules. For more CV support, visit Purdue OWL’s website.

Resource adapted from The Graduate College of the University of Illinois.