PAD Seminar:How to Write your Personal Statement

Margaret E. Winters Provost and Senior Vice President

January 15, 2015

Panelists• Vaibhav Diwadkar, associate professor of Psychiatry, School of

Medicine• Anne E. Duggan, chair of Classical and Modern Languages,

Literatures and Cultures, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences• Darin Ellis, associate dean of Academic Affairs and Student Services,

College of Engineering• Janet Hankin, chair of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences• Judith Arnetz, professor of Family Medicine, School of Medicine

It’s optional – why do it?• Without it the dossier is open to questions; most candidates include a

statement.• Explains why your research is important: how it moves the discipline

forward, what are the policy implications, if any.• Provides an outside evaluator with “the big picture” of your academic life. • Shows you have gone beyond your dissertation and have done independent

research.• If you make a major change in the direction of your research, explains why

you did it.• The personal statement helps external readers (who are not always super

familiar with the kind of scholarship you do) and committees write solid letters for you.

• Serves as a developmental tool. It is worth writing one every year to use it for self-evaluation and for evaluation from others, such as mentors.

Who reads it?

• Put it in lay language, as the reviewers at the college and university levels will not know your discipline. Avoid jargon.

• Most P&T Committee members will read it rather than your articles.

What should go into it?• What am I doing? Why am I doing it? How am I doing it

(methods/strategies)? How well am I doing it? Where am I going in this aspect of my career? Where am I going overall – what’s my vision? Why am I here? What do I want to accomplish?

• Tell a story--what you have done, what you are doing now, and where you will go from here. It is really important to make the case that you have a plan after tenure and won't just rest on your laurels.

• Try to make a case that your research hangs together in a logical fashion. So first you did X which led you to develop a new study to answer issues that emerged from your dissertation, etc.

• It helps to reference your publications and grant funding in the personal statement. So, explain you began with studies of Y which resulted in publications A, B, C and grants J and K.

What are the pitfalls?• Learn you department/college/disciplinary culture for content and form.• Ask someone in your department to read it and give feedback. Our entire

P&T committee does this early in the spring and their comments are very useful.

• PROOF IT CAREFULLY!• Avoid unexplained technical terminology.• Keep it appropriately short. • Do NOT repeat what is clearly provided in your CV and other documents.

This is a narrative statement that should answer the above questions/bullet points.

Promotion to professor: what are the differences?

• Focus on what you have done since last promotion.• Explain why you are ready now for the promotion.• Emphasize your role in graduate training, mentoring

younger colleagues• Speak to your national stature. • Just having been so many years in rank is not

convincing. You need to argue there has been some major accomplishment(s).