Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

It is safe to assume that if you are submitting a CV for an academic position, an academic cover letter will be coming along with it. An academic cover letter is your opportunity to let potential employers know why you are the perfect fit for the job. Your cover letter should let employers know of your accomplishments, but it really should not take more than two pages to do so.

Steve Joy, in a blog article for The Guardian titled “Academic Cover Letter: 10 Tips,” says that one page, single or double-sided, should be enough to convey the message. It might be easy to fall into the trap of writing a cover letter that is too long, since academic cover letters offer more leeway in terms of length compared to other sectors, but Joy advocates against that.

Joy says that an academic cover letter should be treated as if it were a short essay. You don’t need to include every single course that you’ve taught in your cover letter – that information should already be included in your CV. This short essay should be able to answer a fairly simple prompt – what makes you the perfect fit for the position you’re applying for? You will need to find a perfect balance of including enough information to show employers that you’ve done ample work in your field to warrant their interest, but not including so much that reading through your cover letter becomes a cumbersome task.

Someone reading through your cover letter should have a solid grasp of who you are after the first couple lines of your cover letter. Keep pertinent information like your current job, field of research, and your contribution to it at the top. Your cover letter is most likely only one of many that an employer is going to be reading though, so it is important to make them remember you. Do not let length be the reason yours does not end up on their shortlist.

Be efficient with your space. Show, don’t tell. Instead of saying that you’re good at something, provide examples of work you have done that proves that you are. Take into account the fact that not everyone is an expert in your field. Including the research you’ve conducted can be dangerous if an employer ends up more confused than enlightened after reading through your research section.

If you want to provide examples of research you’re conducting, do so in an easy-to-read manner. Ask a colleague or friend that is not in your immediate field to read through your cover letter. If they are not able to understand your research portion, it may be safe to assume that others might not be able to either.

You should be able to stand on your own merits to prove to employers that you’re a good fit for the job. Do not try to mold yourself into something that you’re not – employers will see right through that. And if there’s one bit of advice that Joy strongly suggests – it’s not including student testimonies of how good of a professor you are. He says that this move “smacks of desperation.”

The full article can be found here: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/nov/28/academic-cover-letters-10-tips

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

The curriculum vitae, or CV, is the most important professional document in the world of academics, and is used frequently as a tool in hiring, promotion, tenure, and other decisions at colleges and universities. A great CV can help highlight a well-qualified candidate’s accomplishments, but a poorly executed CV can create poor perceptions.

To help academics avoid common CV pitfalls, Steve Joy, career adviser for research staff in the arts, humanities, and social sciences at the University of Cambridge, published a column in The Guardian outlining simple strategies for minimizing distractions and annoyances in CV documents.

The article, “Academic CVs: 10 Irritating Mistakes,” gives a number of simple tips for academics and explains how relatively minor details of a CV’s organization and formatting can impact the way reviewers perceive a candidate. A chief mistake people make, Joy writes, is creating documents that are not easy to scan through for important information.

“The person reviewing your application may spend no more than 90 seconds scanning through the CV, skimming for key highlights – such as your list of publications, places you’ve worked, grants won, and so on,” he writes. ”You have to make sure that the important stuff, which will not necessarily be the same from one application to the next, leaps off the page.”

Joy goes on to list numerous formatting and organization oversights in CVs that can make the documents unnecessarily difficult to read.

These oversights include splitting sections across page breaks; over- or under- using boldface and italic fonts; failing to list the candidate’s name at the top of each page; and failing to number the pages in a multi-page document. Including these kinds of mistakes in a CV can send a wrong message to the people reviewing it.

He also stresses the importance of using consistent reference style and avoiding institution-specific minutia and jargon that outside reviewers may not understand. Above all, Joy suggests that academics can optimize their CVs by getting input from friends and colleagues before finalizing and submitting the documents.

“When push comes to shove, the best approach to CV writing is the simplest: seek multiple opinions at every stage,” he writes. “And in so doing, dare to be honest. What impression do you really have of me on paper?”

The full article from The Guardian is available here: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/nov/01/academic-cv-job-10-mistakes

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

Over the years, untold thousands of reams of paper have been used to create the portfolios and supporting documents used to review the performance of faculty members. But today’s electronic media present more and more opportunities to package much of faculty members’ CV data in digital formats.

For veteran professors who have been putting together paper portfolios for years, making the decision to go digital can be daunting. Karen Hoelscher and Paula Dagnon, who published a 2012 article in Inside Higher Ed documenting the process of collaborating to create electronic portfolios, followed up with another essay giving readers criteria to help them decide whether it’s time to make the change to electronic media. Hoelscher and Dagnon are both education professors at Western Washington University.

The follow-up essay, “Digital Makeover in Your Future?” suggests that as professors have become more comfortable using digital tools in the classroom, they should apply the same aptitude for technological innovation to their professional documentation.

“Given our increasing comfort with electronic tools for managing and presenting information as teachers, we think it antithetical to our views on teaching, technology, and learning to continue to produce paper versions of evidence of our progress as teachers, servers and scholars,” Hoelscher and Dagnon write.

The article goes on to recommend steps that faculty members can take when considering whether to compose a digital portfolio. These include asking for advice and reviewing the portfolios of colleagues who have already made the leap; asking department chairs and promotion and tenure committee members for their views; and taking an exploratory look at some of the digital tools available to get a feel for how they might present their data.

Hoelscher and Dagnon emphasize the opportunity for professional growth presented by learning to use new media, and encourage readers to reach out to others at their institutions for help.

“Ask yourself: Would a digital story help me represent my evidence in robust, organized, meaningful ways, given the requirements for my next review?” they write. “Could I build on my evidence from year to year, as I move toward my next review? Who could I ask for guidance, and how could I help them in return?”

The full article from Inside Higher Ed is available here: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2012/06/22/electronic-tenure-portfolio-right-you-essay

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

Whether or not to award tenure to a faculty member is an important question that requires detailed analysis by the candidate’s peers and superiors. In order to compile a robust and objective profile of the candidate, many universities solicit recommendation letters from academics within the same discipline from other institutions.

The work and expectations involved in writing an outside recommendation letter can vary greatly, and the information needed from the external reviewer is not always spelled out by the institution or committee requesting the recommendation. To help external reviewers get a handle on the art and science of these situations, The Chronicle of Higher Education in September published “To Tenure or Not To Tenure,” written anonymously by a professor at a major research university, which serves as a guide for writing external recommendation letters.

The article deals with a range of questions, from basics of “who” and “why” to more detailed “do’s” and “don’ts.”

“Who gets asked to write external letters?” the article asks. “That seems like a simple question. It’s not — mostly because the answer depends on the culture of the institution or department. And that culture can change over time depending on the people involved in the tenure-and-promotion process at various administrative levels.”

The article goes on to answer questions about the appropriate length of recommendation letters; the most important content to include; whether evaluation committees “read between the lines” of reviewer comments; and how to avoid sending unintended messages.

“The biggest potential minefield in terms of sending a message you don’t intend is if you try to compare the candidate to his or her so-called peers,” the article says. “It is nearly impossible to do that in a fair way. I have witnessed several instances in which a letter-writer wrote ‘X is a spectacularly outstanding pioneering genius superstar just like Z at Other Great University and I therefore support X 100 percent for tenure at Your University,’ only to hear a committee member say, ‘But I think Z is mediocre.’”

The article goes on to say that, although external reviewers’ recommendation letters are supposed to be confidential, writers should assume the tenure candidate will see the letter or be briefed on its contents, and should endeavor to write in a way that is balanced and objective.

The full Chronicle of Higher Education article is available here: http://chronicle.com/article/To-Tenure-or-Not-to-Tenure-/148699/

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

This fall, Interfolio is focused on making the application process easier for applicants, and you can see the improvements already. We started by improving the process of requesting and attaching letters to your application, but we’re not stopping there. We’ve just released our next major improvement to the submission of transcripts.

Here’s how it used to work: if a search committee added the document requirement of “Transcript (Official)” to an application, you would have to contact your registrar and have them send an official copy of your transcript directly to Interfolio. Sounds simple enough, but when you factor in the cost of ordering an official transcript, the time it takes to be sent, and the time it takes to upload, it becomes pretty cumbersome. And, what’s more, technically every transcript we handled became “unofficial” as soon as it arrived in our office and the seal was broken on the envelope. “Official” had simply become a way to say a transcript came from a university, rather than being uploaded by an applicant.

We weren’t happy about applicants having to spend more money to apply for jobs through Interfolio, and we certainly didn’t want anyone to miss a deadline because of a delay or complication with a transcript, so we’ve removed the document requirement of “Transcript (Official).” For any future application you start on Interfolio, you’ll always be able to upload a copy of your transcript yourself.

Of course we didn’t make this change without consulting the search committees and the institutions that request official transcripts. We found, though, that this document requirement is often a formality, and is typically not needed until the final rounds of selection, when your academic credentials need to be verified. In the first rounds of review, a copy of your transcript that you upload yourself is all that’s needed!

If you do need an official transcript for an application, you can always call your registrar and have them send one to your application destination.

As always, please get in touch with our Scholar Support team at help@interfolio.com if you have any questions about the change to transcripts. We’re happy to help.

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

When Karen Hoelscher, professor of education at Western Washington University, decided to create an electronic portfolio to support a recent post-tenure review, she knew that she didn’t have all of the technology skills necessary to complete such a project. So she turned to a young colleague, assistant professor of education Paula Dagnon, for help.

Dagnon taught Hoelscher about some of the software, hardware and information storage skills involved in creating a portfolio on a website, and collaborated with her along the way until the website was complete. The two documented their experience, along with their thoughts on the electronic portfolio process, for a 2012 Inside Higher Ed article titled “Old Dog, New Tricks.”

In their essay, Hoelscher and Dagnon make their case for why electronic portfolios may be advantageous over traditional paper portfolios.

“We believe there are both academic and affective reasons for developing an electronic portfolio,” they write, “including navigability and transporting a product for another use, and creating clear, compelling, interactive explanations that illustrate how production and role intersect.”

The essay details the process that the two professors went through in creating Hoelscher’s electronic portfolio, outlining the significant time commitment and work undertaken by each. They assert that, while the learning curve for older professors may be steeper, the benefits of learning new technology stretch beyond the creation of a portfolio to enhance a faculty member’s career and teaching skills.

“With a host of new skills, faculty may think about, and use, these new skills in their work as a professor, such as incorporating blogs and wikis to bring students’ discussions and projects to life in classes, and generating enthusiasm for creating a student-produced video featuring what it’s like to be a teacher education student at our university,” they write.

At DATA180, our faculty data management system, FACULTY180, currently generates portfolios in the form of traditional CVs. However, we have had several discussions about the usefulness of providing multimedia faculty portfolios to support the needs of the our client institutions.

Currently, FACULTY180 is focused on collecting faculty data from multiple sources and repurposing that information in multiple forms for multiple uses:

• CVs for faculty performance evaluations and documenting credentials

• Accreditation reports for regional and professional accrediting bodies

• Ad hoc and custom reports for internal data analysis and for reporting to external stakeholders

• Searchable results to support faculty opportunities for networking, collaboration and outreach

We would like to hear from others about the benefits of multimedia faculty CVs in academe.  We will be listening closely as we consider our road map for future development.

The full Inside Higher Ed article is available here: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2012/03/30/essay-collaboration-between-faculty-colleagues-creating-electronic-post-tenure

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.

We ran across a topic from 2008 that still has relevance today for higher education.  The discussion centered around the idea that institutions in higher education need to implement new and standardized academic portfolios to evaluate faculty performance.  This was the conclusion reached by Peter Seldin and J. Elizabeth Miller in their book, entitled “The Academic Portfolio:  A Practical Guide to Documenting Teaching, Research and Service.”

Miller and Seldin shared their perspective on the need for standardized academic portfolios in an interview with Inside Higher Ed upon the release of their book. They were concerned that traditional faculty records provide a list of activities and accomplishments, but fail to give proper context for evaluators or create opportunities for meaningful reflection by the faculty member.

“Evaluators do not inherently understand a professor’s teaching philosophy and methodology,” Seldin and Miller stated in the interview, “or the nature of their research/scholarship, the significance of their selected publications, the context of their work, their most noteworthy accomplishments, their role on institutional committees.”

“The best way to get at the individuality and complexity of faculty work is the academic portfolio,” they continued.  And the authors statements supported the notion that structured reflection allows each faculty member to provide context, significance, and integration of teaching, research, and service to provide more clarity on the cohesive body of work.

In preparing “The Academic Portfolio,” Seldin and Miller interviewed more than 200 faculty members, department chairs and deans from various disciplines and institutions and asked for recommendations about the content of faculty portfolios. They used these suggestions to build a comprehensive portfolio template, which can be customized to meet the needs of specific faculty members or departments.

“The Academic Portfolio” presents this comprehensive template, as well as 18 examples of faculty portfolios from different disciplines.

Seldin and Miller believe their portfolio enhances the faculty performance evaluation process by promoting thoughtful review and producing concise documentation.  “It is based on depthful reflection and provides the ‘why’ and the ‘how,’ not just the ‘what,’” they stated.  And instead of submitting boxes filled with binders (which are unlikely to be read), faculty prepare a portfolio which is limited to 19 pages (typed) plus a tabbed appendix in which supportive evidence is housed.”
Seldin and Miller’s full interview in Inside Higher Ed is available here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/11/portfolio

Content originally published on data180.com. Learn more about Interfolio’s acquisition of Data180 here.