THis is a document slightly modified from one provided by Armin Moczek (thanks Armin).
Welcome to the lab!
While I was a student and PostDoc I noticed a lot of frustration, anxiety and stress arising from students not knowing what their mentors expected of them. In many cases I had the impression that this was largely due to miscommunication. This handout is my attempt to avoid such situations in my own lab and to make clear what my expectations are for members of this lab. I also added a section on my philosophy on co-authorship and other science ethics issues that are important to me. Any questions, comments or concerns on what follows below would be greatly appreciated.
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I expect you to have a life (YES, YOU), to follow interests outside of school, to do what YOU need to do to stay focused and motivated to pursue and complete an excellent thesis and have the career in science that you want. There will be recurring crunch times for all of us during parts of the year, where we will have to work on weekends, evenings etc. Those times are an unavoidable part of life in science, and I expect you to make sacrifices in those times, but these times should be the exception, not the status quo. Take vacations when appropriate, but please let me know in advance.
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That said I expect that when you are at work you work hard and efficiently during the week, every week. Don't waste your time, or mine. Even 10 minute fragments can be used efficiently and should not be spent playing solitaire on the computer or on social media. Socializing is important, but don't let in interfere with your productivity. Talk to me about setting realistic goals and time tables.
We are a team. Respect, courtesy, politeness and the willingness to help each other should go without saying. This also extends to the members of other labs, technicians, undergraduate students, cleaning staff, secretarial staff etc. Should any tensions develop in this lab I would like to know about it before they become a problem.
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I expect you first and foremost to select a thesis project that YOU are excited about!!! Making it through Graduate School requires perseverance, self-motivation, and will be frustrating at least for some of the time for all of you. In order to make it through this and stay sane you need a project you are fascinated by. Exploring options and investing time into finding this topic, even if this means needing more time to graduate, is time well spent.
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I expect Graduate Students to either work on a project that a) is conceptually related to my interests, or b) focuses on study organisms that I study myself with similar or different approaches and guiding questions or c) both.
You are the ultimate chooser of your project, but I will make suggestions. I will also suggest short-term projects to learn particular techniques, concepts, and to assist with collaborative projects that go on in the lab. You are welcome to develop any of this into your own thesis project if you so choose.
People differ in how long and at what times of the day they can read effectively and write creatively. Find out what times and arrangements work for you. When you are starting to develop a project chances are you will be reading a ton of material. This is time well spent! When you are writing papers chances are the first few will take a ton of time, but this is worth it. In both cases I would like to leave it up to you to organize your work week as you see fit, but I would like to make a (strong) suggestion: reserve certain days or hours of the week for reading or writing and nothing else. Make both activities an ongoing part of every week. Ultimately, you should aim for spending some time of every given week to a) keep up with the literature, b) work on a paper that deals with past data, and c) generate data that will turn into a future publication. I realize that there will be no data at the beginning, but once there are please do not sit on them but write them up into a manuscript.
Yes, but: Thesis projects differ in how easily they lend themselves to the generation of papers while you are still a graduate student, and we will handle this issue on a case by case basis. That said, I strongly encourage you to design your thesis project such that as you are progressing through its parts, those parts that are finished can be written up and submitted for publication. This is in your own interest. Having a short list of publications will make your life tremendously easier when you finish your thesis, look for a Postdoc or apply for grants. Aim for at least 1 paper per year.
Yes. Please take any chance you get to recruit outside funding, even if you already have outside support. Applying for these grants will help you tremendously in the future to write successful competitive grant proposals. Getting small grants throughout graduate school is also a great way to bolster your CV and confidence. Unless something unusual happens I expect each graduate student to apply for NSERC, OGS and society awards (usually smaller, for travel or small projects).
I strongly encourage you to engage in side projects other than your main thesis project, provided such a project does not monopolize your research time. The main purpose of side projects is for you to learn techniques, organisms, and approaches, and in the end to get a publication out of it. Accumulating such publications early is well worth it at this stage of your career. It is likely that collaborative projects will be available as you start in the lab, or you may develop your own with me or other colleagues in the Department.
I expect all of you that that work with the flies for their research to help with the maintenance of the strains and populations. This includes cooking food, transferring, cleaning the fly room, crosses, collecting, etc. This may at times be a significant part of your day. Since so much in the lab depends on the strains it is imperative that this work is done well, reliably, and with care. If there are problems I want to know. I expect everybody to work together so that we can cover for peoples' vacations, trips to meetings, etc. During crunch times I may also ask those who don't work with beetles directly to help us out. If you bring your own study organism to the lab it will be primarily your responsibility, but the rest of the lab will do what it can to help you during the times that you are gone.
You will be required to take a general lab safety course and behave accordingly. None of the work we do is worth risking health or safety. Work responsibly, do not assume something is safe, non-toxic, unregulated etc unless YOU KNOW. If this takes you 10 minutes to find someone and ask or look it up this is time well spent. Tell others what you found out.
I have a STRONG preference for clean surfaces, things being stored where they belong, absence of trash etc. So please clean up after yourself in a timely manner. Put things back where they belong. If you notice that ingredients have expired and/or are starting to fail don't just put them back in the freezer. Add a note to them and tell everybody who uses them. If necessary see to it that new stuff gets ordered. Please minimize spills or contaminations of any kind. It really sucks if you end up amplifying the same damn contamination over and over again.
You are expected to keep a daily lab notebook with NEAT, DETAILED, AND LEGIBLE descriptions of your daily lab work activities. Ask your lab mates for advice on how to do this. This includes gel images, measurements, sequences and eventually detailed information on exactly when and where final products where stored so that YOU or someone else can find them months from now. The lab book remains property of the lab.
Data storage is your responsibility. I am happy to provide you with drives, but you are in charge of making sure that your data are well organized, easily accessibly, AND RELIABLY BACKED UP. Losing data because of lack of back up is absolutely unnecessary and avoidable and makes me really irritable :)
I expect to be a co-author on your paper if a) I contributed a significant amount of work to generating the data, b) if I made a significant and novel intellectual contribution, or c) if I was heavily involved in advising you and guiding and directing the project, or significant parts of it. A mere idea generated over lunch or while I took my morning shower does not constitute a major contribution. Your participation in lab group or occasional meetings with me does not constitute intense advising on my part.
Fabricating data, or omitting or correcting data without sound scientific reason will not be tolerated. Your data must be solid and worth your trust. We all have preferred outcomes for our experiments or studies and I expect that you do all that is necessary to exclude your bias, inclination, or intuition from the data you generate. I want you to find the answers to the questions you pose, REGARDLESS of whether this ends up supporting your (or my) pet hypothesis or not. If you are uncertain about how to remove bias from your measurements, ask me. Consider asking your lab mates to randomize / anonymize your samples prior to measurement if appropriate.