Personal Statement
Feinberg requires personal narrative statements for all promotion or tenure applications. Effective personal statements contextualize the accomplishments listed on the CV or provide supplementary information that may not be apparent from review of the CV. The personal statement is also an opportunity to communicate with reviewers outside your field, helping them to understand the significance of your work in your specialty.
Prepare your personal statement manually using the appropriate template as a guide:
- Personal Statement for Clinician-Educators, Team Scientists, and Investigators: use this template if you are appointed to the clinician-educator, investigator, or team scientist track
- Personal Statement for Health System Clinicians: use this template if you are appointed to the health system clinician career track
- Personal Statement for Research Faculty: use this template if you are appointed to the non-tenure-eligible research track
- Save your file using this file naming convention: LastName Personal Statement (e.g., Simpson Personal Statement)
Tips
- Preferred length is 1-3 pages
- Important! Focus on explaining accomplishments since your last promotion (or since your initial appointment, if you now hold your first faculty rank), rather than recounting your entire career.
- Do not simply repeat the accomplishments listed in your CV; instead use the personal statement to provide additional context or other information that is not evident from your CV and that would help reviewers evaluate your application for promotion or tenure (for example, explain specific contributions that may not otherwise be appreciated by reviewers such as clinical expertise, describe extenuating circumstances that may have impacted your progress, list accomplishments that do not appear in other parts of the application)
- Use the personal statement to help reviewers who may be unfamiliar with your field to better appreciate the accomplishments on your CV by explaining the significance/impact of your work in your specialty
- The dean's office or department chair may provide your personal statement to referees when soliciting reference letters (candidates do not solicit their own reference letters)
- For Team Scientists: If specializing in the research domain, use the personal statement to highlight your contributions to team and collaborative research.
- For Clinician-Educators: Use the personal statement to highlight your accomplishments in your chosen domains as recorded in the Feinberg Faculty Portal (navigate to Profile > Current Appointment to confirm). If you have accomplishments in more than these two domains, address your chosen domains first so that reviewers clearly see the connection between your career activity and the criteria they use for evaluation. You are welcome to highlight accomplishments in additional domains as well, but without first establishing achievement in your chosen domains, you can give reviewers the impression that your career is unfocused.
- For Health System Clinicians: Use the personal statement to highlight your clinical impact and recognition as well as your accomplishments in your chosen area of concentration. If you have accomplishments in more than one area of concentration, address your chosen area first so that reviewers clearly see the connection between your career activity and the criteria they use for evaluation. You are welcome to highlight accomplishments in additional areas of concentration as well, but without first establishing achievement in your chosen area, you can give reviewers the impression that your career is unfocused.