College Professor Resume & CV resume examples by experience level

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Use this example

A college professor application does not use a resume. It uses a curriculum vitae, and the difference is not a matter of naming. A resume is a one or two page argument that leaves things out. A CV leaves nothing out, runs to whatever length your record requires, and is read by a committee of people who do your job.

If you have been sending a two-page resume to faculty postings, that is very likely why you have heard nothing back.

Guide to a college professor CV

This guide and the corresponding college professor CV example will cover:

• Why academic hiring uses a CV, and the full document set it asks for
• How to write one, section by section
• Three adaptable versions: ABD, assistant professor, and full professor
• What changes between a research university and a community college
• How to list publications the way a committee reads them
• What the academic job market looks like and what you can expect to earn

Resume or CV: what a faculty application actually needs

Almost every faculty posting asks for four to six separate documents. The CV is only the first.

A one or two page resume is right for exactly one part of this field: administrative and staff roles at a college, and some community college teaching posts that say "resume" explicitly. Read the posting. When it says CV, it means CV.

How to write a college professor CV

Sections, in the order a research-focused application wants them: contact, education, academic appointments, publications, grants and funding, invited talks and conference presentations, teaching experience, advising and mentorship, service, and professional affiliations.

Two rules carry most of the weight.

Everything is reverse chronological within its section. Newest first, without exception, so a reader can see trajectory at a glance.

Nothing is summarised. A resume compresses ten years into four bullets. A CV lists every peer-reviewed article. Summarising reads as having little to list.

Include your contact information

Name with your degree, your current title and institution, an institutional email if you have one, city and state, and your ORCID iD.

An ORCID iD costs nothing and takes five minutes. It disambiguates you from every other researcher with your surname, which matters more the more common the name and the more you publish.

Make use of a profile or research summary

Three or four lines naming your field, your subfield, your appointment status and your central research question. Some disciplines expect it and some do not, so check what your field's CVs look like before adding one.

Doctoral candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan, defending August 2027. Research on how bilingual preschoolers allocate attention during joint reading, with two first-author papers in press and a third under review. Four semesters as instructor of record for Introduction to Developmental Psychology, mean student evaluation 4.6 of 5 across 312 students.

Assistant Professor of Psychology at Ohio State, entering fourth year on the tenure track. Eleven peer-reviewed publications on attention and early literacy, seven as first or corresponding author, and a $412,000 NSF CAREER award funding a four-year longitudinal study. Teach two undergraduate lecture courses and one doctoral seminar, and chair three dissertation committees.

Professor of Psychology and Director of the Early Cognition Laboratory at Ohio State, with 19 years on the faculty. Sixty-two peer-reviewed publications, $3.1M in external funding as principal investigator, and 14 doctoral students supervised to completion, 11 of them now in tenure-track posts. Chaired the department's undergraduate curriculum review and serve as associate editor at Developmental Science.

Right vs wrong: the same profile, twice

The right-hand column is what a committee counts. The left-hand column asks them to take your word for a number they will look up anyway.

Outline your teaching and research

Teaching entries need the course number, the title, the level, the enrolment, your role, and the terms taught. "Instructor of record" and "teaching assistant" are different jobs and a committee reads the distinction immediately.

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2023 to present
Research on attention and early literacy in bilingual preschoolers. Principal investigator on an NSF CAREER award of $412,000. Direct a lab of 2 doctoral students and 6 undergraduate research assistants.
Courses taught as instructor of record:
PSY 2300 Developmental Psychology, undergraduate lecture, enrolment 60 to 110, 4 semesters, mean evaluation 4.6/5
PSY 4890 Research Methods in Developmental Science, undergraduate seminar, enrolment 18, 2 semesters
PSY 8820 Advanced Topics in Cognitive Development, doctoral seminar, enrolment 8, 2 semesters
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2021 to 2023
Ran the second wave of a 240-participant longitudinal study across three sites and rebuilt the coding protocol now used by the lab.

List publications the way a committee reads them

Group by type, in this order: peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, peer-reviewed conference proceedings, then everything else. Within each group, reverse chronological.

Peer-reviewed journal articles
Tanaka, Y., Okonkwo, R., and Lindqvist, M. (2026). Attention allocation during joint reading in bilingual preschoolers. Developmental Science, 29(4), 411 to 429.
Tanaka, Y., and Reyes, D. (2025). Vocabulary growth and shared book reading: a four-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 96(2), 188 to 205.
Book chapters
Tanaka, Y. (2025). Bilingual attention in early childhood. In R. Okonkwo (Ed.), Handbook of Early Cognitive Development (pp. 214 to 238). Cambridge University Press.
Under review
Tanaka, Y., and Feldman, N. Cross-linguistic transfer in preschool phonological awareness. Manuscript under review at Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

What the shape of the profession means for your CV

List the education and credentials that carry an academic application

Degrees in reverse chronological order with institution, field, year, and your dissertation title and committee chair. Include the defence date if you have not finished, stated precisely.

PhD, Developmental Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2021
Dissertation: Attention allocation during joint reading in bilingual preschoolers. Chair: Professor Rachel Okonkwo.
MS, Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2018
BA, Psychology and Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2016, with high honours

If you are ABD, write it as "PhD expected August 2027, dissertation defended June 2027" or "defence scheduled March 2027". Vagueness here is read as a problem, because a department hiring for a September start needs the degree in hand.

Choose the right CV layout and design

Plain. A CV is a reference document, not a designed one. Single column, one standard serif or sans-serif face, consistent headings, page numbers, and your surname in the header of every page after the first.

You will need a genuine one or two page resume as well, for administrative posts, industry roles and grant biosketches. When you build that version, check its ATS score for free, because those applications do go through parsing software while faculty searches do not.

The academic job market

Postsecondary teaching is growing faster than the average occupation, which sits oddly beside how competitive individual searches feel. Both things are true: the openings are real, and most of them are not the tenure-track posts applicants picture.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025-35 projections.

What you can expect to earn

The median annual wage for postsecondary teachers was $85,330 as of May 2025 (BLS). Institution type moves that figure more than seniority does at the start of a career.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.

Field matters as much. Law teachers had a median of $128,500, economics teachers $123,920 and engineering teachers $109,270 in the same data. Those gaps are set by what the discipline pays outside the university, not by what the university values, which is worth knowing before reading a departmental offer as a judgement on your work.

Key takeaways for a college professor CV

1. Academic hiring uses a CV, not a resume, and a two-page resume sent to a faculty search is why you heard nothing.
2. Expect to write four to six documents, of which the CV is only the first.
3. Reorder the CV for the institution: research first for an R1, teaching first for a community college.
4. Give every course its number, level, enrolment and your role, and distinguish instructor of record from teaching assistant.
5. Group publications by type, mark your authorship position, and never list submitted work as published.
6. State your defence date precisely if you are ABD.
7. Keep the design plain, number the pages, and put your surname on every one.

Build your academic CV in Rezoom and keep a one-page resume version for administrative and industry applications.

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Pair it with a matching college professor cover letter.