Listing talks given at home institution on CV

Question

I've given many talks at my home institution, at the undergraduate and graduate colloquiums, and in a few seminars. The list is getting quite long.

Is it appropriate to list many talks given at my home institution? Does it reflect badly on me?

Answer 1

First of all, it's great that this list is becoming long! It's good to be taking every opportunity you can as a student to practice presentations, and many students try to avoid this rather than embrace it.

Now, as for what to include in the C.V.: while in principle you can include anything, in practice you want the C.V. to convey "here are all of the things I've done that I think are significant". Thus, it's not the question of home institution per se, but the significance of the talk venue that matters. For example: if you were invited to give a talk in a seminar series where most of the other speakers come from other institutions, that's nearly as significant as giving a talk elsewhere. Giving a required talk in the internal graduate colloquium matters much less.

I would recommend keeping some evidence of the fact that you are giving many presentations on your C.V. To keep it from feeling like filler, however, you can compress the "unimportant" talks into a single bullet point, like "NN presentations in internal meetings, seminars, and colloquiums." That conveys the information without feeling spammy. Once you've built up a significant record of giving talks at external venues like conferences and other institutions, then you can drop that bullet point as being assumed.

Answer 2

Internal talks generally carry no prestige since there usually is little to no competition to get a a talk. In fact, it is no unusual for the organizer of internal seminar series to have to resort to begging. Internal talks demonstrate three things. The first is that you are a good departmental citizen and are willing to participate in something the department deems important. The second is that it shows you are actively conducting research. The third is that it shows a willingness to present your research and receive feedback on it.

When to list internal talks on your CV depends on what the CV is for. For an annual review, listing internal talks from the past year is critical. For a promotion review it is generally useful to demonstrate all of your departmental citizenship activities. For a grant application it is probably not useful since funders do not really care if you are a good citizen. For job applications, it is a mixed bag and somewhat depends on your personality and other activities. There are often better activities to demonstrate departmental citizenship, but many of these activities are more painful than giving an internal seminar.