OSF Expectations page: ====================== ----------------------------- Expectations for Everyone: -------------------------- I expect that everyone who joins my lab (including myself), will: - Communicate. Communication is both sending **and** receiving information between you and your peers (so listen as well as talk). Communicate changes to plans. Communicate the plan in the first place. Learn how to communicate feedback effectively (and be able to hear feedback for what it is, not an attack on you personally). Communicate when something isn't right or isn't working. Communicate when something is fantastic, or even just when it is working as usual. - Work on what fulfills you and do work that you are proud of. Your time on earth is very short, geologically speaking. I expect you to be a part of my lab because it is part of achieving a fulfilling goal. If it stops being the case before your time in the lab is up, talk to your mentor or collaborator so that y'all can find a solution or arrange for a transition to your next adventure. - Do careful, thoughtful work. Check your work. Double check your work. As Mariam Aly says, "Incorporate sanity checks." Get feedback or second pair of eyes on your code, data, or analyses if you need help or get strange results. Mistakes are okay, carelessness is not. - Admit mistakes, communicate the mistake and its corrections to colleagues who have already seen the results, and move on. A mistake is not necessarily a problem, but hiding a mistake definitely is. - Conduct yourself with academic honesty and integrity. Misconduct includes plagiarizing, data tampering, fabrication, and omission. There is zero tolerance for academic misconduct in this lab. - Respect and support everyone else in the lab, from PI to undergraduate work-study student to lab guests. Respect includes giving others, their culture, their work, and their time the same weight and consideration you give your own. Use respect in your communication. Avoid behaving arrogantly or belittling others. Support includes helping other lab members as they will help you and cultivating collaborative habits. Our field is small and behaving competitively with your peers will leave you isolated and lonely very quickly. - This should go without saying, but behave respectfully. Do not harass people in the lab, do not tolerate the harassment of others in the lab, and generally don't behave offensively in the lab. - Continue doing what fulfills you outside of work, take care of your mental and physical health, and remember to keep your self-worth and identity as a human being separate from your research. Expectations of Professor/Principal Investigator: ------------------------------------------------- My commitment to you is that I will: - Provide a physical and intellectual lab environment that is conducive to learning and discovery. - Help you select the best tools and approaches for research projects. I will teach you techniques with which I have expertise and help you find experts for those with which I do not. - Help you navigate the professional world. This part is essentially helping you select the best tools for professional projects. It includes questions of collaboration, networking, equity, ethical research, mentoring. As part of helping you navigate the professional world I will also help you network, including sending emails to introduce you to people in the field and connecting you to people at meetings. - Help you navigate the opportunities that you will have after my lab (example: job applications, fellowships, graduate school applications and decisions). - Meet with you regularly to discuss progress, obstacles, personal and professional goals, or simply fun things you've learned or done since last we spoke. - Provide timely feedback on your work performance, proposals, grants, abstracts, posters, talks, and papers. Stacey Smith said it best: "feedback is one of the most important ways to promote your success. If you want to think of it this way, I am like the person who will be brave enough to tell you that you’ve got spinach in your teeth, but in an academic way." A week should be adequate for feedback on small projects (abstracts, short proposals, posters). Two weeks should be okay for medium documents (a manuscript, a long proposal), and three weeks for large projects (a thesis or dissertation). - Respond to your emails and requests in a timely fashion, about 24 hours or less during the work week. - Listen and help you solve problems and navigate difficult situations. - Alert you to funding sources, jobs, and other opportunities. - Write letters of recommendation for graduate school, professional school, jobs, or post-docs, given advance notice (two weeks should be adequate for the first letter, one week for letters afterward). - Help you find other resources and other mentors when you need additional support beyond my abilities. Expectations for Undergraduate Work-Study Students and RAs: ----------------------------------------------------------- The commitment I need from you is that you will meet the expectations that apply to everyone. In addition I expect you to: - Schedule regular meeting times. Respect the meeting times that we mutually agree on. - Make good faith attempts to learn the tools and techniques that are part of your project(s). - Communicate your progress to me or your mentor regularly (usually at least weekly). - Communicate challenges and problems as soon as they come up, not weeks later. Discuss potential solutions with me. Expectations of All Student Researchers: ----------------------------- The commitment I need from you is that you will meet the expectations that apply to everyone. In addition I expect you to: - Meet with me regularly, and respect the meeting times that we mutually agree on. - Make every effort to learn to use tools and techniques we use in the lab competently. This does not mean that you will never make mistakes, but it does mean that you will put quality, care, and thoughtfullness into your work. This also does not mean that you will not occasionally encounter a tool to which you are not well-suited. That is okay. Make the effort and if things do not work out then do not wait to communicate with me or your mentor. Give yourself and us as much time as possible to find an alternative solution. - Think about scientific problems and problems you encounter in your research, and come to me or your mentor with questions or to discuss. - Maintain thorough, organized records related to all aspects of the project such that another scholar could replicate your work based on those records alone. - Keep track of graduation requirements, departmental deadlines, conference abstract deadlines, and plan accordingly. Come to me with questions or to discuss. - Carefully read grant opportunities, graduate program solicitations and job ads, conference deadlines, then come to me with questions or to discuss. - Send me all proposals, abstracts, manuscripts, and other professional work for comments prior to submitting or presenting. You should send abstracts and other short work to me at least five days before any submission deadlines. Longer works, such as manuscripts or proposals, should be sent to me at least two weeks prior to deadline. Why this policy? Because part of my job as a mentor is to make sure your formal, public output meets a certain standard of quality and professionalism. As part of this expectation, I will not hold up your productivity for an unreasonable amount of time. If two weeks have gone by or if the deadline is rapidly approaching and you still haven't gotten comments from me, follow up and bug me. - Alert me to letters I need to write with sufficient time. Two weeks is usually sufficient for a first-time letter, a week for additional letters, but more may be needed if it is a busy season. - Give me at least one day's notice and chance to read anything that requires my signature. Manage your time and deadlines to prevent last-minute scrambles. - Consider and reflect on your larger goals. Revise them as need be. Periodically check and make sure you are prioritizing activities that are moving you closer to achieving those goals. - Either maintain an active presence in the lab, or let me know that you are moving on. If you are working on a project but I haven't received any communication from you or seen progress in 2 months, I may reassign your project to someone else. Some projects in the lab have due dates. We need to complete these projects within a certain amount of time or else we risk losing future access to resources. Expectations for Undergraduate Researchers: ---------------------------------------- The commitment I need from you is that you will meet the expectations that apply to everyone as well as the expectations that apply to all students. In addition I expect you to: - Develop your weekly schedule by talking to your mentor or myself. You should be coming in every week, and scheduling enough time to get your work done. - At the beginning of each semester, arrange a regular time to meet with me once a week. This may be in the form of a group lab meeting. - Alert me or your mentor as soon as possible if you would like to participate in a research experience like the summer URECA scholars program, write a senior thesis, or attend a conference, and meet with me ASAP to set reasonable goals for accomplishing this. Expectations of Graduate Students: ---------------------------------- I expect you to meet the expectations that apply to everyone. I also expect you to meet the expectations that apply to all students. In addition, I expect you to: - During your first year in the program, I expect you to keep me updated on your grades on every assignment in the core courses (E&E: BIO 550, 551, 552). An initial disappointing grade isn’t necessarily a problem if (and only if) it prompts you to quickly seek out resources to help you improve. - Read scientific literature to find the answers to questions and make yourself the expert. You are responsible for finding and reading the papers that will make you an expert on the current state of your field. - Design and pursue a research project that fascinates you. I further expect that you will follow through on a research project until it reaches a point that you communicate a result to another human being. - Pursue research that fits in with the focus and expertise in the lab. This expectation helps make sure that you have a firm, supportive, collaborative foundation on which to develop your ideas and your own expertise. If, partway through, you realize that your focus has shifted to topics that cannot be supported as well as they deserve in this lab, I expect you to to come talk to me so that we can find a solution. - Seek out resources to solve problems without necessarily being pointed to them. To quote Stacey Smith again, "Many things ‘stick’ better" this way. Creative problem-solving is also an essential skill to learn in research-oriented and other careers. Continue to ask me for assistance when needed. Sometimes I will help directly but sometimes my job will be to point you in a direction rather than give you an answer. - Seek out the training, experience, and reading that you need to become an expert in your research tools. Look beyond standard coursework in your program, which is likely not sufficient for all of the different things you will need. Expertise in a tool includes knowing its assumptions, its limitations, requirements for appropriate input, how it works, the properties of its output, and what kinds of questions it can appropriately answer. - Invest time in a certain amount of communal work that benefits the lab as a whole even if it does not directly contribute to your thesis or dissertation. In doing so, you support a functioning lab that can in turn support you and other students. Some of this work is unassigned. Some of it you will be directly assigned on a semesterly basis. This communal work will come in the form of jobs such as participating in broader impacts projects, maintaining equipment, preparing specimens, making sure data are organized, backed up, and maintained, collecting data for group projects, mentoring undergraduates, and managing work-study students. I will make every effort to make sure your communal lab work is as closely aligned with your research and career goals as possible (Interested in a job at a PUI? Let's put you on undergraduate mentorship. Interested in a museum job? Let's put you on collection management and specimen curation). This work should not average more than ~5 hours of your week. If it does, I expect you to speak with me and make sure communal work isn't becoming a negative, unpaid ask of your time. - Tell me when you can't do something that I request you to do. Learning when you are at capacity and when and how to push back to avoid being overwhelmed is part of maturing as a professional. Saying no is okay. I expect you to do it occasionally. - Be present in the lab on a regular basis. You do not need to clock in a certain number of hours per week, but the more you are in the office during normal work hours the more you will be available to become a better colleague with your labmates and they with you. Being present will help you form a stronger community with the other students and faculty members in the department. It will also help you be more visible to myself and to other faculty members, which will become useful to you as you grow into one of our peers. - Respond to emails in a timely fashion, about a day during the work week. Keep me informed of major features of your calender, such as when you will be out of town for more than a day or two, in case something in the lab comes up and we are looking for you. In short, I do not expect you to be available to the lab 24/7, but I do expect some sort of predictability in when I and others can reach you. - Pursue funding for your research projects even if the projects are associated with ongoing research in the lab. The pursuit is the single best way to learn how to communicate the importance of your research plans and acquire the resources you need to bring those plans to fruition. Furthermore, in research careers your grant funding track record will be important to future employers. Start early and pursue often because it takes a lot of practice and repeated failure to learn what you need to know. - Give me feedback when these expectations need to be reconsidered, either on an individual, case-by-case basis or for all students or lab members. Part of going to graduate school is growing into a peer with other researchers, including myself. I expect you to be able to think critically about your place in the lab community, see what needs to be fixed, and take the action to help fix it. - Make yourself aware of and keep up with the expectations of the graduate program in addition to my expectations. Expectations of Post-Docs: -------------------------- - Develop an Individual Development Plan (IDP). Share it with me. Take primary responsibility for achieving the plan, including semesterly goal setting, annual reflection, and annual revision of the plan. - Develop a daily writing practice in which you spend at least 30 minutes of each day drafting manuscripts, grant proposals, conference presentations, or (if there is none of that work available) other scholarly activities. - Take primary responsibility for leading the research project that we agree upon. Responsibility includes developing a project plan (including a timeline and budget), proposing the plan to me, implementing a version of the plan that we mutually agree upon, and keeping me informed of progress, roadblocks, and any proposed changes to the project. - Take primary responsibility for the recruitment, training, and participation of more junior members of your project. Essentially, function as the project leader. - Initiate discussions with me about data ownership, sharing, and credit as projects develop.