It's come up in our lab that we should probably have business cards for when we attend conferences, however, we've been given very little guidance for what is appropriate for a graduate student.
Some questions that have come up:
- Should we be trying to standardize the cards to look like the official university's cards? (e.g., with the university logo, etc)?
- Related to the first question, should we be going for standardized or for something that will make us stand out?
- Should we be putting our current status on the card? It seems like if we haven't hit ABD yet then it might be counterproductive because then we'd have to buy new ones each time we made progress.
- Should we be adding our research interests directly on the card? What about advisor?
- Any other information (other than contact/website) that we should be including or tips on this?
Answer
I would standardize them and simply put the most relevant information on them. My (dated) business card looks like this:
Now I think it has a little bit more information than needed; fax is almost certainly not needed, but there might be circumstances where it's handy to have the mailing address. But important are:
- University + department
- Academic homepage
- E-mail address
- Perhaps phone number
- The fact that you're a PhD student.
I wouldn't add too much information on them. Business cards are for core info, nothing more; they might get crowded otherwise.
My own business card is outdated: a university reform means I'm no longer at the Department of Space Science, but at the Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Division of Space Technology. But I don't care, because the e-mail address is still correct, and the new department/division wouldn't even fit on a business card ;)
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