What is a CV?
Curriculum Vitae (CV) is a detailed account of one’s work experience, professional training, and educational background, as prepared by a person applying for a job. In academia it is used in place of a résumé and includes the applicant’s teaching and research experience, a list of publications, and any grants or fellowships awarded.
Audience: Colleagues with a shared experience, fellow faculty, typically with expertise in your or an adjacent field
When to Use: Your CV is typically used to apply for academic fellowships/grants and positions within academia (e.g., postdoctoral positions, temporary faculty appointments, and tenure-track positions). An exception to this could be teaching roles at community colleges explicitly calling for résumés.
Content: There is no page limit to an academic CV, but the format does vary by field. For interdisciplinary researchers who may be applying to a variety of departments, make sure to read the CVs of faculty in the discipline/department to which you are applying. In general, a good place to start building your documents is by looking over the CVs of your adviser, principal investigator (PI), and/or committee members.
Although there are no restrictions on length, you do need to consider the accessibility of the document, selecting structure that is consistent and in reverse chronological order. Use consistency when employing bolds, italics, underlines, and capitalization to draw attention across CV sections.
When you write your various role descriptions, think about the value you added in each experience and how you worked. Avoid having a list of roles alone, or descriptions of the department, class, committee, etc. without situating your contribution as the focus. Refrain from the narrative “my duties included” and using first person in general. For some fields, you will write verb-driven bullets; for others, you will develop abridged, abstract-like descriptions.
Content Considerations: You will not have one CV but rather several curated to the type of roles to which you are applying. Research-intensive positions, for example, might prioritize research experience, grants, and publications, with regard to your curated content. Conversely, teaching-focused positions would lead not with research, but experience teaching, relevant certifications from Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching, etc.
Things to Exclude: Information regarding your age, citizenship status, marital status, race, or sex should not be included on your résumé.
Below is a sample CV template with suggested categories and sub-categories to consider for your experiences, though your final document may include additional sections (e.g., patents, outreach, etc.).