COWIMS WOM

Search

Personal Statement

Personal Statement Requirements

The purpose of the personal statement is to provide your narrative of accomplishments, current activities, and future directions. It should also provide evidence of accomplishments related to the criteria for advancement. You are also required to add two stand-alone statements:

  • Describe engagement with learners in your mission area of excellence (clinical, research, education, community).
  • Give a brief self-evaluation regarding adherence to the expectations of professionalism as outlined in the SOM Code of Conduct by describing at least one example of activities that demonstrate professionalism. For details see SOM Code of Conduct from the link on this page: https://med.virginia.edu/policies/university-of-virginia-school-of-medicine-code-of-conduct/

Personal statement that do not include these points will be returned.

Personal Statement Suggestions

  1. Consider your audience, which will include referees and P&T committee members who are scientists and physicians.
  2. List the high level points you wish to convey. As you write, stay at a summary level and do not go into too much detail on any one point.
  3. Consider starting with the most important part of your job and ending with a summary.
  4. We encourage you to submit up to two pages.
  5. Use active voice, which makes your writing stronger and more direct.

Sample Personal Statements

Access to SharePoint requires an Eservices password. If you do not know your password, reset it here by logging in with your UVA Health credentials.

The faculty listed in the links below gave permission to the Office of Faculty Affairs and Development to share their personal statements:

Tenure Eligible Tracks
Tenure Ineligible Tracks

Professionalism Self-evaluation

Include a stand-alone description of your efforts to approach all of your work in a collaborative manner. For those providing clinical care, feel free to frame this in the context of your work to deliver excellent care through the lens of helpfulness, positivity, kindness and competency.

Engagement with Learners

Include a stand-alone description of your engagement with learners in your personal statement. Engagement with learners may take many forms, such as teaching, mentoring, hosting students in your lab, co-authoring posters/papers/abstracts, participating in a student interest group, designing curriculum, hiring a work-study student.