Curriculum Vitae Preparing Your Academic Resume

Curriculum Vitae

•A CV is your professional record

• It is often required for

• Employment

•Membership to professional organizations

•Honors and awards

• Educational opportunities

•Giving invited seminars

• It is a living document

• You should update your CV several times per year

• It will continue to grow as your career progresses

Curriculum Vitae

• It is not uncommon to have two or more CVs prepared

•An extensive CV

•A short CV

•A predefined format (usually for databases)

•Abbreviated and succinct

•Be honest

Format of CVs

•Reverse chronology

• Sections• Full name and contact information

• Academic employment and training history

• Areas of expertise

• Grants

• Publications

• Presentations

• Service

• Professional societies

• Honors and awards

• Extracurricular activities

• Professional references

Suggested Books on CVs and Personal Statements

• How to Prepare Your Curriculum Vitae, Acy Jackson and Kathleen Geckeis, 2003.

• Write Your Way to a Residency Match: Advice for your Personal Statement, CV, and Letters of Recommendation, Linda Abraham and Cydney Foote, 2005.

• The Curriculum Vitae Handbook: How to Present and Promote Your Academic Career, Rebecca Anthony and Gerald Roe, 1998.

• Preparing the Perfect CV, Rebecca Corfield, 2006.

• The Résumé Makeover, Jeffrey Allen, John Wiley and Sons, 2001.

• Knock 'Em Dead 2008, Martin Yate, Adams Media Corporation, 2007.

• Your Résumé: Key to a Better Job, Leonard Corwen, IDG Books Worldwide, 6th Edition, 1996.

• Resumes and Personal Statements for Health Professionals, James W. Tysinger, Ph.D., Galen Press, 1999.

What Is Scientific Writing?

Chapter 1

What Is Scientific Writing?

•Communication of data in a concise and meaningful manner

•Audience understanding is critical

• In science, this can be difficult because you are saying something for the very first time

• You are contributing new knowledge to the scientific community

•Communication of data in a concise and meaningful manner (cont.)

• You must avoid verbosity (literary embellishments)

• Metaphors - using a word as something it’s not

• “The curtain of night”

• Similes - comparing one thing to another

• “Heart as big as a whale’s”

• Idioms - nonliteral use of a word

• “She caught his eye”

• Be economical (clear and simple) in your writing; the concepts are difficult enough

What Is Scientific Writing?

Historical Perspectives

• In the “early” days of science (centuries ago), scientific writing was descriptive

• The scientific method (hypothesis testing) had not been developed

• Scientists were interested in describing their surrounding world

•As science progressed (1800s) descriptive writing was still employed, despite the development of the scientific method

•As a result, it was often difficult to repeat experiments performed by others

Historical Perspectives•After World War II scientific research was

expanded dramatically

• The development of new weapons, principally the atomic bomb, stimulated this growth

• In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik

• The launch of Sputnik led to a national security crisis• It was now conceivable that nuclear weapons could be delivered

by space vehicles (30 min to target)

• For the first time in U. S. history, a President (Eisenhower) conducted a live TV address to the nation about a scientific topic

Historical Perspectives

• Eisenhower’s administration collected the various Federal scientific funding agencies into large groups

•National Institutes of Health

•National Science Foundation

•National Aeronautics and Space Administration

• Funding for scientific research and education expanded exponentially

• This led to a surge in the amount of data generated by the scientific communities

• Journals were inundated with manuscripts - still written in descriptive form

Historical Perspectives

•Because of this increase in manuscript submissions, journal editors had to devise a new system to reduce the verbosity of descriptive writing

• IMRAD

• Introduction - What is the problem?

•Materials and Methods - How was the problem addressed?

•Results - What was found?

•And Discussion - What does it mean?

Historical Perspectives

• The IMRAD (or IRDAM) system is now nearly universally adopted by journals

• The result has been force economy in writing

• The style and format of articles are identical, thus provide more efficient review and analysis

• The replication of experiments by other investigators has become easier