How should my fiancee describe this work experience?

October 31, 2017 8:37 AM

My fiancee is a graduate student updating her academic CV. She is trying to determine the wording for a one semester project assistantship where the sole project she worked on was the design of a multi-media presentation of a reporter's non-fiction science book.

She took the content of the book and translated it into an hour-long talk with videos and pictures. The talk will be delivered as the plenary at a scientific conference, during invited lectures at universities, and when the author goes on tour to promote the book's release in paperback. She's not sure How to label this project on her CV. Is it a book talk? A book presentation?

posted by Fister Roboto to Work & Money (9 answers total)

Assistantship, Reporters Company, Dates

* Researched and Developed content and presentation techniques to train employees of Reporters Company over a four month span - generating a projected $250,000 in book sales revenue.
* Led team to design and develop a Printed and Digital Multimedia Presentation using Microsoft Powerpoint, InDesign, Windows Movie Maker, and Microsoft Excel. Presentation then delivered to over 200,000 across an international tour.
* Coordinated with vendors of print media to develop and produce materials for touring presentation team, owning quality, timeline, and project management aspects.

...I've made a few resumes before...
posted by bbqturtle at 9:19 AM on October 31, 2017

I'd list it under Presentations. If it were me I'd list my name after the reporter's. Something like:

Reporter, AB and CF Fiancee. (Forthcoming). [Title of presentation]. Presentation to be given at Society of X Conference, Boston, MA and University of such and such, San Francisco, CA.
posted by Drosera at 9:28 AM on October 31, 2017

In my course of graduate study (Information Science), my one-semester project was called a Practicum.
posted by homesickness at 10:26 AM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

If she's trying to get an academic faculty job she should not give any descriptive information about her positions. If she's looking at getting a job in academia, this job should just be labeled as a graduate assistantship, perhaps also with the reporter's name that she assisted listed in a parenthetical afterwards.

She should only list herself as an author on presentations if she's an author on those presentations. She needs to ask the advisor on the project if that's the case. Someone else going and giving talks on a book tour about the book will not appear on her CV.

Source: faculty member (and one who would be very upset if one of my graduate students listed themselves as an author on things that they weren't an author on).
posted by sockermom at 10:39 AM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Hi sockermom, yes, she has no intention of representing herself as the author of the book that the presentation she created is related to.

She is interested in how to best describe her work in creating the presentation on her CV.
posted by Fister Roboto at 1:04 PM on October 31, 2017

Best answer: This project could also be classified as instructional design or science communication. If that's a useful skill to promote, she could list it as a project assistantship and describe it as translating scientific work for popular/non-expert audiences.
posted by dapati at 1:08 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

Could you clarify whether this is for a CV to be used in the academic job search (i.e. looking for a faculty position) or more of a resume to be used outside of academia?

bbqturtle's listing looks great for a non-academic resume, and I would just be sure to emphasize the relevant skills/accomplishments that match the specific job listing she's applying to. But I agree with sockermom that there should not be that much description if it's an academic CV. I would probably list it briefly under "Other Projects" or "Media Contributions", with a one-sentence explanation at the most, but to be totally honest, this type of thing will not matter in hiring for a faculty position so I wouldn't spend a ton of time worrying about it.
posted by rainbowbrite at 2:23 PM on November 1, 2017

Just to quickly add -- if this is for an academic/faculty job, and there is some reason this work is especially relevant to that faculty job (i.e. the job posting specifically asks for skills in communicating with non-academic audiences or something like that), then I would address it in the cover letter or some other type of attached statement. Potentially a discussion of how these skills translate into the classroom/communicating with undergrads could work in a teaching statement (especially if you have limited teaching experience to draw on otherwise). So there are places to put this material in an academic job application, there just shouldn't be so much detail in a CV.
posted by rainbowbrite at 2:27 PM on November 1, 2017

Yes, someone suggested she list herself as an author of the talk, which is why I explicitly said not to do that. I didn't mean to imply that your fiance was going to take credit for the book, but she also can't take credit for the talk as an author in the way that was suggested. Calling this scientific communication is great, and you could say graduate assistantship in scientific communication with the faculty advisor listed as the advisor on the project, something like that:

2017, Graduate Assistantship in Scientific Communication (Faculty Advisor).
posted by sockermom at 12:45 PM on November 3, 2017