Listing supervision on a CV?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, an anonymous postdoc asks:

A simple CV question: How, if at all, do you list supervision on your CV?

Should you list supervision at all? Does it matter whether it is MA or PhD supervision? Does it matter if you are chair or a secondary supervisor? Do you put it under teaching or in its own section? Do you give names of the students? Do you give the titles of their theses?

I ask because I am a postdoc at the moment with limited teaching experience on my CV. I am serving as secondary supervisor to two MA students. I wonder if I should include this in my teaching section and, if so, how I should do so (see above questions)?

Good questions! Another reader submitted the following reply:

All the distinctions matter. Have a sub-list for PhDs separating those you are the supervisor for, from those you serve on the committee of; a sub-list for MAs, again, separated. List it under teaching, unless you are a leader of a team or lab with post-docs as well, then have a separate heading for Supervision. Whatever you do do not exaggerate your role to beef up your teaching. It will backfire.

I'm curious whether other readers agree. It does seem to me that it's good to list how much supervision one has done, as some job ads explicitly note supervision experience as a hiring priority. But, beyond that, I'm not sure. I'm also not sure whether it's a good idea to list names of students, as in the US at least my understanding is that all academic information falls under federal FERPA privacy laws. 

Anyone else have any helpful tips or insights?

Comments

[Anon Postdoc]

OP here: Assuming that I won't be listing student's names or thesis titles, I wonder how you would list this without it looking very bare. For example, under the heading Supervision, would I just write:

2023: MA thesis as secondary supervisor.
MA thesis as secondary supervisor.

Anything like that looks a bit odd to me (not enough detail), that is why I wondered if other information could be included to flesh things out?

[the other reader]

Hi
Marcus is probably right about FERPA, but if the ananmous postdoc wants the information to fill gaps in their teaching experience, they had better list the topics or titles of the Masters and PhD theses. Only then can they do any really work. So you've supervised some MAs working on the philosophy of cosmology, for example. Well then you can provide soem assurance that you can teach philosophy of physics, say.

[Reader of CVs, Protector of FERPA]

This might be clunky, but presumable students can waive the FERPA protections for something like this. Perhaps, OP could ask whether the students would mind being listed on the CV or professional website, and then one could asterisk the section, "*Identifying information listed with permission" or something like that. My guess is that will go well beyond what most people do to protect FERPA in these sorts of cases. But, why not set the norm?

[East Coaster]

I don't know anything about FERPA, but I not irregularly see CVs listing students with names and often work titles.

If you were uncomfortable with that, you could include areas / rough project descriptions.

E.g.

2023: MA thesis on experimental philosophy, as secondary supervisor, MA thesis on Platonic account of the forms, as secondary supervisor

[Juan S Pineros Glasscock]

Like others, it's my sense that it's fairly standard to list info of names and topics of theses on one's CV (Some of my PhD advisors do, and so do I--see my cv on my website (linked here) for format. I list it under 'Teaching').

I'm not a legal expert, but I doubt this falls under FERPA. Here's a helpful link on what FERPA covers:
https://reg.uga.edu/general-information/ferpa/
And, in particular, here's what falls under 'directory info', which universities can disseminate (e.g. on department websites):
https://apps.reg.uga.edu/FERPA/information/info/4
As you can see, it includes "Thesis/Dissertation title and Faculty Mentor".

That said, I would remove identifying info if one of my students listed ever asked me to.