Outlining a CV in Composition & Rhetoric

outlines visualization

Composition and rhetoric is a little bit of an intimidating field to write one’s CV into, because we study and have expertise on the rhetoricity of things. Applying those same guidelines and standards to my own work can be intimidating. Nevertheless, here’s a beginning outline.

  1. Personal Information
    1. Include meaningful contact information: where I live is useful, but email and mobile phone are probably most meaningful.
    2. Include social media links (but be sure those included and those not included are up to snuff and entirely presentable). The identity we allow others to see who are not our friends is as important to readers of the CV as the identity we create for those who follow or like our social media presences.
    3. Include professional-oriented social media like LinkedIn and Academia.edu. One’s openness and willingness to be identified on social media is part of the rhetorical identity portrayed through the CV.
  2. Education
    1. In reverse chronological order, most current/recent first.
    2. Don’t bother with GPA at this point (I’m 22 years into my professional career). What matters is that I earned degrees from accredited colleges.
    3. Be sure to include thesis and dissertation title, but not abstract.
  3. Publications: Group these in several categories, depending on what’s applicable. I’ll probably go with something like this:
    1. Peer Reviewed
      1. Published
      2. Accepted and Forthcoming
      3. Proposed
    2. Online
      1. Solicited or Responses to Calls
      2. Unsolicited
      3. Guest Posts
    3. Popular
  4. Presentations
    1. Conference
    2. Invited
    3. Informal (not sure what this is going to mean…)
  5. Teaching Experience
    1. Higher Education: Term-by-term summary statement of each class outcome and professional development undertaken as a result, if applicable. [Note: here’s where I wonder if it’s useful to specify anything about student evaluations, because mine are regularly quite strong.]
    2. Secondary: Quick listing of classes
    3. Noncredit or Others: Include guest lectures, church teaching experiences, other non-traditional instructional opportunities. <– This is probably a way to demonstrate a career-long dedication to pedagogy, perhaps a differentiator when applying to a school with strong instructional requirements.
  6. Service: I think I’ll present this as pedagogical and community. As a composition teacher, my work is often in service to all other disciplines; as a professional and as a person, I give back to my professional, personal, and religious communities and want it known that I do so.
    1. Pedagogical (Just a mention that I teach composition)
    2. Professional
    3. Personal
  7. Grants: I have little to show here, but I don’t see much benefit of grouping these with granularity.
  8. Professional: This is an area unique to my experience: I have LOADS of professional experience in higher education and nonprofits that is not “academic” or “scholarly.” As a result, I want to be able to highlight my work history in several categories.
    1. Web Development
    2. IT Management
    3. Educational Leadership
  9. Professional Development
    1. Webinars
    2. Conferences
    3. Classes
  10. Honors and Awards
    1. Offices held/Appointments received
    2. Awards and honors received (I think I’ll go back to undergraduate, but probably don’t need to. Only if appropriate to Comp/Rhet experience.)
    3. Other ways of being honored (honorary degrees, employee of the month, etc.)
  11. Interests: A way to reach beyond the scholarly and point to areas of intersection between personal, professional, community, and service. In my case, my interests are in technologies, especially new technologies.
  12. References

Outlines: CC-licensed Flickr image courtesy mkorsakov

3 thoughts on “Outlining a CV in Composition & Rhetoric

  1. This is a really good outline of a CV in your field. I think the Service and Grant sections are probably the more difficult sections to complete.

  2. I like how your publications has three sections: Peer Reviewed, Online, and Popular. I know in my field online journals are starting to become mainstream and listing them would be important.

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