Job Titles

Assemble a job title from a fixed vocabulary arranged in a fixed order. Choose a word from each part that applies, skip the parts that do not, and write what remains in the order given below. Do not invent wording, reorder the parts, or substitute a synonym.

The UAMS Brand Guidelines do not address title format. This is the UAMS Web Services convention and governs titles in web content.

How a Title Is Built

Every title is one required role plus optional parts around it. professor is a complete title. So is interim associate department vice chair of the College of Medicine's Department of Physiology, built from the same rules.

Four kinds of title are covered: faculty, academic leadership, institutional leadership and clinical leadership. Each has its own order. Use the order for the kind of title being written; do not mix parts between them.

Rules That Apply to Every Title

• Order is fixed. The order belongs to the kind of title, not to the writer.
  • Right: associate professor
  • Wrong: professor associate
• Skip what does not apply. Nothing marks a skipped part. A title using one part is as correct as one using six.
• Write every term lowercase. A title is a phrase, not a heading. Capitalize it as its surroundings require. The exception is the official name of an organizational unit inside a title, which keeps its own capitals.
• Choose exactly one role. Every other part is optional.
• Where more than one word may be chosen, write them in the order listed, never the order they were chosen.
  • Right: visiting distinguished adjunct professor
  • Wrong: adjunct visiting distinguished professor
• Choose one honorific or none. emeritus and emerita are the same honorific in two grammatical genders. Never use both.
  • Right: professor emerita
  • Wrong: professor emeritus emerita
• The shared-role prefix co- closes up against the word that follows it.
  • Right: co-director, co-vice chair, co-medical director
  • Wrong: co- director, vice co-chair

Faculty Titles

Teaching and research appointments. Write the parts in this order.

1. Leading options — any number, in this order: visiting, distinguished, adjunct
2. Scope qualifier — clinical or research
3. Hierarchical modifier — associate or assistant
4. Role (required) — instructor, lecturer or professor
5. Honorific — emeritus or emerita
6. Unit or discipline — see Naming the Unit

Examples:

• visiting clinical associate professor emerita
• adjunct research assistant professor
• professor in the Department of Internal Medicine
• professor of pediatrics
• professor

Academic Leadership Titles

Leadership of an academic unit.

1. Leading options — any number, in this order: interim, regional, executive
2. Hierarchical modifier — associate or assistant
3. Object — department, division, section, residency program, fellowship program, medical student clerkship or training
4. Shared role — co-
5. Positional qualifier — deputy or vice
6. Role (required) — chair, chairperson, chairman, chairwoman or director
7. Honorific — emeritus or emerita
8. Unit or discipline — see Naming the Unit

Examples:

• interim associate department vice chair
• co-director of the Center for Health Literacy
• residency program director
• chair emeritus of the Department of Physiology

Institutional Leadership Titles

Leadership of the institution rather than of an academic unit. There is no object; a chancellor leads a portfolio, not a kind of unit.

1. Leading options — any number, in this order: interim, regional, senior, executive
2. Hierarchical modifier — associate or assistant
3. Shared role — co-
4. Positional qualifier — deputy or vice
5. Role (required) — president, chancellor, provost, dean, director, chief of staff, general counsel, chief legal counsel, chief legal officer, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, chief information officer, chief technology officer, chief marketing officer, chief strategy officer, chief communications officer, chief human resources officer, chief people and culture officer or public relations officer
6. Honorific — emeritus or emerita
7. Unit or discipline — see Naming the Unit

Examples:

• senior vice chancellor for academic affairs
• interim dean of the College of Pharmacy
• chief information officer

Clinical Leadership Titles

Leadership of a UAMS Health service line.

1. Leading option — interim
2. Hierarchical modifier — associate or assistant
3. Object — service line
4. Shared role — co-
5. Role (required) — administrator, director, medical director or nursing director
6. Unit — see Naming the Unit

Examples:

• service line medical director
• medical director of the Cancer Service Line
• interim service line co-director

Naming the Unit

A title may end by naming what a person leads, where an appointment sits, or which discipline it covers. Three prepositions do this and no others: of, for and in.

• of — chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, section chief of endocrinology
• for — vice chancellor for the Northwest Regional Campus, vice chancellor for academic affairs
• in — professor in the Department of Internal Medicine

Do not use at, over, within, or a comma in place of a preposition.

Name the unit as the unit names itself. Use the unit’s formal name, not a paraphrase of it.

• Right: chair of the Department of Internal Medicine
• Wrong: chair of Internal Medicine

Name the unit once. The object names a kind of unit; the ending names the unit itself. Do not use both for the same unit.

• Right: department chair
• Right: chair of the Department of Internal Medicine
• Wrong: department chair of the Department of Internal Medicine

A discipline is not a unit, so it may follow an object.

• Right: section chief of endocrinology
• Right: chief of the Section of Endocrinology

Drop the ending entirely when there is no name for it. Never leave a preposition without a unit.

The Article

The article is not a matter of preference.

• An organizational unit takes the. of the College of Medicine, in the Department of Pediatrics, for the Northwest Regional Campus, of the Cancer Service Line
• A discipline, specialty or portfolio does not. of pediatrics, of endocrinology, for academic affairs
• in has no form without the article, because it introduces only units.
  • Right: professor in the UAMS College of Medicine
  • Wrong: professor in UAMS College of Medicine

Capitalization Inside a Title

Capitalize the official name of an organizational unit. Do not capitalize a discipline, specialty or portfolio; these are not proper nouns.

• Right: professor in the Department of Pediatrics
• Right: professor of pediatrics
• Wrong: professor of Pediatrics

The same words take capitals inside a unit name and lose them outside one: vice chancellor for academic affairs, but vice chancellor for the Division of Academic Affairs.

Endowed and Named Chairs Are Not Job Titles

A named or endowed chair — Martha Wood Bentley Chair in Ophthalmology, Steven K. Wilson Endowed Chair in Prosthetic Urology — is a recognition a person holds, not a position. Record it as an award or honor. Do not place it in a job title field, and do not build it from the parts above.

A person holds a named chair in addition to a job title, not instead of one: professor of surgery and, separately, John W. Nutt Chair in Ophthalmology.

A Title Paired With Its Unit

Writing a finished title next to its unit — Professor, Department of Internal Medicine — is a display choice, not a fourth preposition. Where a page or template pairs the two, the title itself is still built from the parts above.

Not Yet Settled

Capitalization of a title placed before or after a personal name is not settled here. AP style capitalizes a formal title before a name and lowercases it after, and UAMS has not ruled on applying that to titles generally. Do not invent an answer; follow the surrounding publication’s practice and flag the question to Web Services.