Tips for Writing a CV

by Susan Somers-Willett, former CWRL Instructor (from Fall 2003 Newsletter)

Tip #1 Highlight your CWRL experience in job materials

• Mention CA teaching in your job letter. If you're applying for job that doesn't call for experience in technology, you might want to mention it as you talk about teaching.
• Mention CA teaching in your teaching philosophy. This is an opportunity to get in-depth with how you used CA classroom and the successes and challenges you faced using the technology. If you did a cool project on the Web, this is the place to get into it.
• Mention CA teaching in your CV. There are lots of place to do this, but the first and foremost should be in your teaching section--put your course Web sites in there. Also don't forget to mention staffing and any special projects you did for the CWRL under "departmental service."
• Mention CA teaching one-on-one. In interviews or on-campus visits, ask about what opportunities they have for teaching in CA or multimedia classrooms.

Tip #2 Build your class website for a professional (as well as a student) audience

• Students are always your first and primary users, but your fellow scholars and teachers are a close second! Think about how your Web site can be a resource for a general academic audience.
• Keep your syllabus, policy statement, links and assignments up-to-date online even after the semester is over--you can point potential employers to them.
• Keep in mind it does not have to be graphically elaborate:the cleaner the better. But also remember that you want to do more than slap a bunch of text up there--try to find one or two dominant images to work from.
• Remember that potential employers and publishers might run across your site, so make sure each page of your site appears with your name, course number, topic, institutional affiliation, semester taught, and your current contact information on it. Put a link to your class home page on every branched page.
• Meta-tags in your HTML headers can help search engines find your site and make your site more visible.

Tip #3 Build a professional home page for yourself

• You have the resources, so do it! Academic sites can be pretty impressive to hiring committees.
• "The cleaner the better" philosophy also applies here.
• Perhaps divide your academic interests into major categories: teaching, research interests, a bio, publications and honors, etc. Although the site itself will act as a CV because it reflects your range of academic interests, you probably will also want to post a full version of your CV somewhere prominent.
• The Web is a great place to put materials interviewers often request, such as a writing sample or teaching philosophy (you may choose make it viewable only for them).
• Avoid being too personal, in both your language and design (some people think even a photo of yourself too much).
• Remember: this site represents the whole of your academic interests, so you may eventually want to build it into a resource for other scholars. If you do, make sure to post only materials for which you have copyright permission (NB: Generally, most texts over 80 years old are in the public domain).

Susan Somers-Willett received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin in Spring of 2003. She presented the information in this article as part of the "From CA to CV" panel at the CWRL's 2003 colloquium.