Note to lab members: this document is a work in progress and may be updated at any time. Please make sure that you review the lab policies on a regular basis (semi-annually). It is your responsibility to be familiar with the content.
My primary goal is to help you make the transition from a student to a colleague. You should be an independent and professional research biologist by the time you leave MSU. One of the most important things you can do to make this transition is take ownership of your decisions and be proactive about figuring out what you need to do. Lots of other people, including me, will give you advice during your time here. You need to sort through the advice, integrate it with your own knowledge, and decide on the best path for you. You will need to make many decisions, from those concerning research methods to how to manage your time. Your decisions should be well-thought-out and you will need to justify them. Sometimes the decisions won’t produce the results that you want but this is an important part of the learning process and, if you have made well-informed, conscientious decisions, that is perfectly okay. This process will continue throughout your research career. Sometimes you and I will not agree. This, too, is okay as long as you have good, well-informed reasons for detouring from a path I suggest. I will generally let you know how strongly I feel about a particular issue.
From my experience, the most important predictors of success are:
- Hard work
- Ability to accept criticism and consider other points of view, and integrate these criticisms/viewpoints into your research process
It is a good idea to become very familiar with the literature in your field and spend time learning to code efficiently and effectively. As a graduate student and postdoc, you have a unique chance to explore new ideas and pursue topics that interest you. I encourage you to take advantage of this time, to deeply consider what motivates you, and to pursue new opportunities as they become available.
Please schedule meetings with me at times when you want to discuss ideas or need feedback. I expect you will drive the agenda of our one-on-one meetings, providing a list of things we need to discuss—this is part of your taking charge of your education and development. I will let you know if I have anything that I would like to discuss before we meet. I may forget the details of your specific project in between meetings so please come prepared with a brief summary of what you have been working on and what we discussed at our last meeting. Please take notes at our meetings so that you can address any issues or complete any tasks we discuss.
I encourage people to send me some written work at least 48 hours before our meeting. Your written materials do not have to be long although they can be (note- I may need more time for extensive materials such as a draft manuscript). The written work could be a summary of the major conclusions from some data you are analyzing, a plan for how you will approach your comps, a draft of a proposal or manuscript you are writing, etc. Written work is ultimately the most critical component of being successful in research. Developing the most elegant model will get you nowhere if you don’t write it up. In addition, providing me written work before our meetings will increase the probability I can give you useful advice. If you hand me something at our meetings, I will not have had time to look it over and think about it.
The length of time between these meetings will vary, depending on your stage and immediate goals. Sometimes, we will meet a couple of times in a single week. Other times, it may not be for several weeks. However, it’s probably a good idea to check in at least monthly, even during times when you are busy with other, non-research related tasks (e.g., course work, teaching, etc.).
Publications are your only true form of currency. Your degree alone, or even your research experiences, won’t get you a job and neither will your grades during graduate school. It is to your advantage to publish early and often. I aim to provide you with diverse project and publishing experiences, including opportunities to co-author papers because it is imperative that you get ample practice writing and producing peer reviewed publications during your time in the lab. This will help you with whatever career path you choose. Being able to write clearly and effectively is an important skill in research, policy, management, and education.
In the lab, we strive to make our work as transparent and reproducible as possible. To that end, once you publish an article, I expect that you will upload all materials related to the project (i.e., data and code) to our lab’s Github site. Please see the “Project completion checklist” for a detailed list of tasks associated with closing out a project.
I always have commitments on my schedule so please give me adequate time if you need a letter of recommendation or want me to edit a proposal or manuscript with a deadline. In most cases, a week should be a sufficient amount of time. However, whenever possible, I would appreciate more advanced notice. There might be certain times when I am jammed so giving me the most amount of time possible (especially for things with hard deadlines) will ensure that you get what you need from me.
For any letter I write or proposal you want me to look at, be sure to include all the relevant details in the email you send, i.e. the funding agency, any guidelines for letter writers or guidelines about the proposal, deadlines, where the letter should be sent, etc. For letters of recommendation, include your CV and any other information that can help me write the best letter possible. Also, please send me at least one email reminder a day before the deadline.
Lab meetings provide an excellent opportunity to learn about current research in the lab and to present whatever it is that you are working on and get feedback. At the beginning of each semester, we will pick a day and time for lab meetings. Each member of the lab will present at least once a semester. You (or I) may decide that it is worth presenting more than once, depending on your particular goals for the term. This is something we can talk about at the beginning of each semester. Potential topics for the lab presenter include: general research topics, technical issues, practice presentations, questions about the literature, reviewing a draft manuscript, etc.
The presenter should send any written materials to the lab listserv at least a two days before the meeting. Other lab members should come having read any materials and prepared to give feedback. Lab meetings are one of my favorite parts of my job and some of my best memories from graduate school. I hope they will be as useful and engaging to you as they are for me.
Presenting at conferences is a crucial part of your education. Conference attendance is also valuable for building your networking skills, this is especially true when you are near the end of your time in the lab and looking for postdocs or jobs. I encourage you to be thinking about what meetings you would like to attend and when. It is my intention to cover your travel expenses to meetings when you present (or workshops that we both agree will further your education) but I may not always have funding available or I may only have partial funding. As such, you should look for funding opportunities and apply for travel funds from outside sources whenever you plan to attend a meeting. I encourage you to talk with me well in advance of abstract deadlines about whether a particular conference is a good fit for your work and also about what funding I have available and how much of your trip I will be able to cover.
I encourage everyone to take vacations! Vacations can help you reenergize and refocus. It is your responsibility to let me know when you plan to vacation or when you will away from the lab. It helps if you tell me as soon as you know you will gone but please let me know at least two weeks in advance (for multi-day trips).
There is no official policy about how much vacation you have or when you can take it. As long as you stay on top of your work and your obligations (as a TA, RA, or anything else) than I have no problem with you taking vacations or working remotely on occasion. Similarly, it is your decision about the hours you would like to work and where you would like to work. I encourage you to work at your desk in the lab for some amount of time every week. This helps build community and will allow you to get instant feedback from me or other lab members on a regular basis (which, in my experience, can greatly increase productivity). So far, there have not been any issues with these policies and I hope we can keep it this way.
It is your responsibility to know all of the rules and requirements for your program. You should be aware of any and all deadlines.
IBIO guarantees PhD students five years of funding during the academic years (fall and spring terms) and three years for Masters students. Funding past these time frames is not guaranteed. Many students in the program take a year or two longer and do receive teaching assistantships after the guaranteed period has ended. However, you can’t depend on this.
Your funding will be in the form of fellowships (usually during your first and/or last year), research assistantships, and/or teaching assistantships. Each of these positions come with a certain number of credits, health insurance, and a stipend. You will receive the standard IBIO stipend rate (set yearly by the department) if you are funded by me as a research assistant. The other stipend rates are determined by whatever program gives you the funding.
You should plan on being a teaching assistant for at least one term during your time as a grad student in my lab. Experience teaching will be valuable to you (and your CV!) whatever your career path, even if you decide to leave academia. On the same token, I don’t want you to teach every semester that you are a student, as this can impede your progress on your research and dissertation. As such, I will work with you to obtain research-related funding if you don’t have it. In some cases, you may need to take the lead on proposals. I am always available to talk with you about this and I encourage you to bring up any funding issues in our meetings if you have concerns.
Ideally, you will be funded over the summers while you are a graduate student. You should talk to me no later than February of each year so that we can discuss your funding for the upcoming summer and develop a plan. You will receive the standard IBIO summer funding rate (set annually) if you receive summer funding from one of my grants.
There are many summer funding opportunities through MSU and outside sources. You should make a concerted effort to obtain summer funding on your own every summer. This serves two purposes: first, it provides you with practice writing proposals (another one of those invaluable experiences). Obtaining your own funding looks excellent on your CV; second, it saves money for the lab, which can be used for other things (e.g., conference travel). Unfortunately, lab funding is a zero sum game. Once we spend it on one thing, we can’t spend it on something else. It is my intention to provide you with as much summer funding as I can if you are unable to secure your own. But this, of course, is dependent on what money I have available. While there is no guarantee of summer funding, I will try my hardest to help you obtain partial or full funding over the summers while you are a graduate student.
I recommend you take full advantage of your committee meetings, which in most cases, should occur yearly. You won’t have all of your committee members in one room too often during your training so make sure you are extremely well-prepared. You should send the committee an agenda and any documents you want them to read three to five days before the meeting. During the meeting, you will generally give an oral presentation, letting people know the very specific goals of the meeting first and then proceeding systematically through the areas you need to address. If you aren’t prepared for your meeting, it will be clear to the committee.
I expect your PhD dissertation will comprise four high-quality manuscripts (two for a masters thesis), in which you are the first author. You will likely also have to write a short introduction tying together your chapters and possibly a (very short) conclusion section, depending on what your committee requests.
At least two of the manuscripts should be accepted for publication before you defend your dissertation and the other manuscripts should be submitted. The publication process can be long and arduous. Therefore you need to plan carefully. I encourage you to start on your research from the very first day you join the lab. I expect that you will submit your first paper around the end of your second year, before you take your qualifying exam (which typically occurs in the fall semester of your third year).
The material in this code of conduct is derived from lab policies by Dr. Catherine Lindell and Dr. Regina Baucom.