Recently I have been to several conferences (big surprise to regular readers!) and have been asked for business cards. My last business cards were very much part of my homeschool ethos and not appropriate for an academic in higher education, so I do not hand them out.
But I realized I have a conference next week and the week after and wanted to have business cards made.
Then as an adjunct I had to decide what to put on them.
I ended up with
my name centered in the top 1/3 followed by ,PhD (My husband said since I was an adjunct he thought it was important to include that information.)
with the title Adjunct Professor (This is the actual title at one of my schools.)
English, Business, & Writing under that (areas of teaching)
Then I had the logos for the two schools at which I teach and my email for both of those schools, left and right, starting about 1/2 way down the card.
The final line is my cell phone number. I don’t have an office phone number and we are considering getting rid of our land line. Hopefully I won’t give my card to any crazy people. I don’t usually give my cell phone number out to people I don’t know well. Oy vay.
But, I think it is important to have business cards, even though many people don’t like them.
I have them and I am looking forward to handing them out.
One other idea: I was given a business card at a conference where the giver works at only one college, so it was easy to have extra space. She used the bottom third of the card to list her research interests. I think this is a great idea. It’s just I don’t want to have a list that looks like this:
political rhetoric
science fiction and fantasy
business writing
technology in the composition classroom
mental health
trauma in the composition classroom
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Gulliver’s Travels
religion
vampires
Old English Judith
teaching pedagogy
literature introductions
…
I would need a whole sheet of 8×10 paper to list my research interests and it would just confuse people. So I left that off.
But if you have a single school and address and are looking for some useful information to add, I recommend research interests.
Business card thumbnail is from MattCutts.com.