Toolkit Home	Introduction	Unit 1: Planning for Promotion & Tenure	Unit 2: Creating A Strong Portfolio	Portfolio Examples	References & Resources	Toolkit Site Index

Unit 2: Creating a Strong Portfolio

Section 2.2: Crafting the Curriculum Vitae to Highlight your Community Engagement

Introduction
Tips & Strategies for Developing a Strong Curriculum Vitae
Tips & Strategies for Highlighting Community-Engaged Scholarship in Your CV
Portfolio Examples
References & Resources

Introduction

"Document, document, document. You always need to be thinking about how you'll have evidence."
Full Professor

"Highlight grants for service. One has to draw attention to it. One must build the portfolio as one would as a body of [traditional] work."
Associate Professor

The curriculum vitae or CV is a critical part of every faculty portfolio. The CV provides promotion and tenure committees with a detailed summary of a faculty member's training, and their teaching, research and service activity. When creating your CV, you want to consider how "well it introduces you and whether you accomplishments and qualifications shine forth" (Bickel, 2001). Most institutions or schools have a preferred order for the CV. If this is the case at your institution, it is important to "follow the rules" and guidelines. Click here for an example from the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine (see appendix 12).

Tips & Strategies for Developing a Strong Curriculum Vitae

In many respects, creating your CV is a fairly straightforward process of documenting of work over an extended period of time. There are, however, a number of tips & strategies to make your CV 'stand' out' as an exemplary model:

• Create a CV that is organized and formatted. Make sure all your publications include all the appropriate reference information and that they all use the same referencing style. Be careful not to include extraneous information just to increase length.
• Keep your CV current and update it regularly. As a faculty member, you are likely currently involved in more activities that you want to count, and thus, without frequent documenting of your work, it may get lost in the shuffle. Some faculty continually update their CV. Others use a file folder for keeping track of relevant CV information. Whatever system works for you, develop an effective method for keeping track of your scholarship and service work.
• Keep CV examples that are well-done. Review and save CVs of faculty whose careers you would want to emulate and are well done. This can shed light on important tips for what information to include and how to present it.
• Develop a Table of Contents. One faculty in the Scholarship Project used the guidelines from her school to develop her CV but then added a Table of Contents at the very beginning. This technique added a unique and nice organizing feature for her CV.
  

• Create an Executive Summary of Your CV. Janet Bickel, a well-known Career Development and Executive Coach and Faculty Career and Diversity consultant encourages faculty to present an executive summary of one's CV. This may be an effective strategy, since many CVs near the time of promotion and/or tenure can exceed 15 or more pages in length. You might consider including this summary with the CV in your portfolio.

Tips & Strategies for Highlighting Community-Engaged Scholarship in Your CV

Faculty in the Scholarship Project have used the following strategies to highlight community engaged scholarship.

• Place a star on publications where one or more of your co-authors was a community partner. This highlights your commitment to recognizing community partners for their scholarly contributions.
• Place a star on publications where one of your students was a first author. This highlights your commitment to mentoring your students, and your willingness to support their development.
• Under the 'Current Teaching Responsibilities section,' create a subheading called Community-Based Education or Service Learning Courses. Refer to these courses and their students and community impact in your teaching statement (link to section on teaching portfolio page]
• Cite training manuals for community and innovative educational materials under publications. Highlight these products in your personal statement, especially if you are able to indicate how they were peer reviewed and what potential impact they are having on learners, community members or policy makers. Cite educational and public health evaluation reports.
• Create a separate section under 'Grant Activity' called, "Grants for Service or Community Engagement"
• Create a subsection within the most relevant CV heading that enables you to highlight leadership roles that highlight your community engagement. Faculty who are 'engaged' with communities tend to hold a number of leadership positions, and would benefit from highlighting these service and practice in service.
• Highlight your service work in three areas: (1) University Service, (2) Professional Service and (3) Community Service. This method of categorizing your service can show your committee the breadth of your commitment to service both within the university and beyond. Click here for definitions of these terms.
  

Go to Toolkit Site Index