General philosophy
I have passionately helped individuals develop into independent scientific investigators and champions of science for more than twenty years. As a mentor of students and trainees in independent research, I seek to make a contribution to the development of the whole person. This requires that I understand your current intellectual and professional states as well as future plans. Each person I mentor is different, and different goals require different skills, but I will aspire to help you develop certain universal skills — asking questions, identifying good research projects and questions, managing projects, acknowledging shortcomings, and
communicating effectively. I will encourage you to be a good team player and have the courage to lead when leadership is needed — regardless of your position in any existing power structure.
I cannot be the sole source of your personal and professional development. You should expect to have other mentors with other strengths and know I support activities that broaden your personal and professional development.
My responsibility as a researcher
As part of my job as a professor, I am expected to write grants and initiate research that will make tangible contributions to science, the academic community, and to society. You will help me carry out this research, which demands good and ethical scientific methods. It is imperative that we carry out good scientific method and conduct ourselves in an ethical way.Publishing in scientific journals, presenting our findings at scientific meetings, and communicating our work’s value to the public must remain priorities to advance our
field. I also value outreach and informal science education, both in the classroom and with the public. I expect you to participate in this component of our lab mission while you are part of the lab group.
What you should expect from me
I will work tirelessly for the good of the lab group. The success of every member of our group is my top priority, no matter their personal strengths and weaknesses, or career goals.
I will ask you to schedule time for regular meeting and be available for informal conversations. My schedule requires that we schedule times to meet to discuss your research and any professional goals or personal concerns. Although I will try to be available as much as possible for “drop in business,” keep in mind that my commitments to university, departmental, and community service may limit my availability.
I will help you navigate your graduate program of study. As stated above, you are responsible for keeping up with deadlines and understanding your specific program’s requirements. However, I am available to help interpret these requirements, select appropriate coursework, and select committee members for your oral exams.
I will discuss data ownership and authorship policies regarding papers with you. These can create unnecessary conflict within the lab and among collaborators. It is important that we communicate openly and regularly about them, as balancing data ownership and authorship across our multidisciplinary collaborations is often our greatest challenge. Your perspective will help me protect your interests and those of the lab and know that I will intervene to support a solution that is productive for all.
I will be your advocate. If you have a problem or challenge, come and see me. I will do my best to listen and identify a path that will assist in resolving or moving forward.
I will facilitate your training in complementary skills needed to be a successful scientist. These include oral and written communication skills, grant writing experience, compliance with all grant and publication guidelines, scientific policy, and professionalism. My trainees take advantage of the many offerings for learning through the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences, the McKelvey Graduate Student Services, the Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, and Vice Provost for Graduate Education. I will encourage you to seek teaching opportunities, even if not required for your degree program. I will also encourage you to mentor undergraduate and/or high school students, and to seek formal training in this activity through the Center for Teaching and Learning or other offices of the University.
I will encourage you to apply for awards, fellowships, and similar opportunities. If you commit to applying for an award or fellowship, I will work with you to ensure that your application is competitive. Similarly, I will recommend job, networking, and collaboration opportunities, arranging introductions if desired. I will support your leadership and service aspirations with advice, letters of recommendation, and more as you request.
I will provide you with feedback on your written work. Preparing scientific presentations,
publications, and abstracts across groups and formats is a learned skill that requires writing and re-writing. My schedule cannot accommodate extensive notes and revisions without my receiving your drafts and their deadlines in a timely manner (usually a minimum of one week). Arguments based on quantitative data or theory warrant figures or tables that support your point. It is ever more important to visually display quantitative data, and I may learn more from you on new modes of scientific communication.
I will respect your own personal work habits and timetable. I generally work in the evenings until 9pm and may send emails overnight to ease my workload. However, I never expect you to respond between 9:00pm-8:00am. If we face a short deadline due to unforeseen consequences, you will decide whether working late is acceptable. If you plan an experiment that requires long hours or frequent “timepoints”, you may have to plan to work outside of “normal hours.” However, if you can be productive away from the office, just keep me updated on your progress, join meetings in person when needed, and join meetings electronically when appropriate. I am generally flexible on work location.
I acknowledge that there is a wide range of writing and presentation styles. That said, there is a fairly narrow standard that scientists use to communicate new ideas, interpret data, or make conclusions and it is my job to prepare you to communicate in this discipline. For that reason, it may seem that I am trying to force you to adopt my writing style. I will be open to your commentary when we have this concern, but understand that I understand pitfalls and successes due to my exposure to multiple and diverse scientific writing styles.
I am committed to maintaining a cohesive and strong laboratory. Trainees associated with my research program and laboratory reflect upon all members of the lab, so that we strive to maintain a supportive culture for all, a high level of professionalism, and some continuity of “branding,” writing, and presentation styles across lab personnel. This means I may ask you to support other trainees at conferences or meetings and change your template, colors, or vocabulary in a paper or presentation. We may discuss acceptable dress for a conference (i.e., wear a lanyard or satisfy a minimum level of professionalism). This supports the lab’s broader success and allows us to train talented personnel like yourself in the future.
I will encourage you to attend scientific/professional meetings and will try to fund such activities. I cannot cover all requests, but you should expect to attend at least one major conference per year when you have material to present. Please use conferences as an opportunity to further your education and share that education with all in the lab. If you register for a conference, I expect you to attend the scientific sessions and participate in conference activities as a professional representative of the lab. Upon your return from a
conference, I expect you to share the excitement of conference activities and science with lab members at lab meeting and journal club presentations, particularly with those who did not attend. If grant money is unavailable, I will help you identify and apply for alternatives to support your participation.
I will strive to be supportive, equitable, accessible, encouraging, and respectful. I am human and can be impatient, short-tempered, sleep-deprived, and forgetful, but I will always try to respect you and not use harmful language in our interactions. I know that each student comes from a different background and has different expectations for professional interactions and personal and professional goals. It will help if you bring your whole self to the research experience, and keep me informed about your experiences. My role is to foster your professional confidence, critical thinking, and creativity. If my attempts to do this are ineffective, I am open to discussing other ways to achieve these goals.
I will strive to review your performance each year using an Annual Performance Report or
Individual Development Plan. At that time, you should remember to tell me if you are unhappy with any aspect of your experience as a trainee at this institution or in my lab.
Remember that I am your advocate, as well as your mentor. I can nominate you for awards
throughout your lifetime (or mine) and introduce you to professional colleagues who can support you. I can help navigate any challenges you encounter with other students, professors, or staff.
If you feel that you need more guidance, tell me. If you feel that I am interfering too much with
your work, tell me. If you would like to meet with me more often, tell me. At the same time, I will tell you if I am satisfied with your progress, and if I think you are on track to graduate or move on by your target date. It will be my responsibility to explain to you any deficiencies, so that you can take steps to fix them. This is a good way for us to take care of any issues before they become major problems.
What I will expect from you:
● Plan, design, and conduct high quality scientific research
● Present and document your scientific findings
● Stay current with the literature, and modern methods of scientific communication
● Be honest, ethical, and enthusiastic
● Engage with the research group and other on-campus programs
● Respect your lab mates, our collaborators, our lab funds, equipment, and materials
● Take advantage of professional development opportunities in this institution
● Work hard – don’t give up!
Acknowledge that you are responsible for your success from this experience. This includes
commitment to your work in classrooms and the laboratory. You should maintain a high level of professionalism, self-motivation, engagement, scientific curiosity, and ethical standards.
Update me regularly on progress in your activities and experiments. Make sure that you
communicate new ideas about your work and any challenges. Remember — I cannot address or advise about issues that you do not bring to my attention. If something is timely or urgent, you should contact me via Slack, cell phone text, email, or phone call at any time; I can respond more easily with these methods when I am in other meetings.
Manage your scheduling of meetings with me. I will make time to meet with you or small groups of trainees on my Google Calendar. I trust you to schedule those meetings and to inform me if adding one to my calendar less than 12 hours in advance. Other duties, such as travel, impromptu meetings, and proposal deadlines, often require cancelling or rescheduling your meetings with me; if the meeting is not on my calendar that morning, the available time usually disappears. We should meet at least once every two weeks, which is usually sufficient. During times of rapid progress or when deadlines are at stake, additional meetings may be scheduled.
Contribute to scientific writing and publications. My lab’s success, funding, and reputation
depend on peer-reviewed publications, a standard of academic accomplishment to which I expect you to contribute. However, I will also recognize your work’s broad range of impacts: teaching, outreach and service, patent and invention development, and mentoring. Your contributions to science, engineering, medicine, and society can stretch beyond journal publications and enhance your impact as an investigator.
Actively cultivate your professional development. Our institution’s resources support
professional development for trainees. I expect you to take advantage of these resources because becoming a successful engineer or scientist involves more than just academic research. You are expected to make continued progress in your development as a teacher, as an ambassador to the general public representing the University and your discipline, and as an engaged member of broader professional organizations. I will support your participation in these broader activities, even when they appear to take time away from our research mission.
All graduate degree programs require attending a weekly seminar, and as a member of several
multidisciplinary research centers, including the Center for Regenerative Medicine and the
Musculoskeletal Research Center, I will expect you to participate in at least one educational seminar or opportunity per week. Various organizations on campus engage in science outreach and informal education activities. Conferences and workshops also provide professional development opportunities.
Understand the policies, deadlines, and requirements of the graduate program, the graduate school, and the university. Comply with all institutional policies, including academic program milestones, laboratory practices, and rules related to chemical safety, biosafety, and field work. Where my experience or knowledge can help you, you can count on me.
Attend and actively participate in all group meetings, as well as seminars that are part of your educational program. Group meetings call for not only presenting your own work but also sharing your insights to help other lab members. Do your part to respect others and engage.
Strive to be the very best lab citizen. Take part in shared laboratory responsibilities and use
laboratory resources carefully. Maintain a safe and clean laboratory space where data and research resources are protected. Respect, tolerate, and work collegially with all colleagues, including collaborators. Appreciate individual differences in values, personalities, work styles, and theoretical perspectives.
Be a good collaborator. Collaborate in and beyond our lab group. Collaborations are more than just publishing papers together. They demand effective and frequent communication, mutual respect, trust, and shared goals.
Leave no trace. You will often use equipment that does not belong to our lab, such as shared
resources and equipment in collaborator labs. Respect this equipment and treat it even more carefully than our own. Always return it as soon as possible in its original condition. If something breaks, tell me right away so that we can fix or replace it. Don’t panic over broken equipment. Mistakes happen. But it is unacceptable to return something damaged without taking the steps necessary to fix it.
Acknowledge the efforts of collaborators. This includes other members of the lab as well as those outside the lab. Always inform me if someone helps you intellectually or materially, even when they are not in my current collaborator’s lab, so that I can interact with that lab PI to appropriately recognize and acknowledge that effort. This can include copying me and other principal investigators on emails when expertise, experience, or equipment is shared.
Present your work to others in the field at meetings and seminars and in scientific articles.
Published papers, the “currency” in science, drive much of our research. Supporting taxpayer dollars require that we share our findings. I will push you to publish your research as you move through your training. Master’s students are expected to author or make major contributions. While there is no set level of productivity for any one trainee, doctoral students degree are expected to be lead author on at least two journal papers submissions, preferably three or four. In addition, postdoctoral research associates are best positioned to seek additional employment with a first-author paper in review or accepted along with co-authorship on the lab’s multiple other publications.
Keep up with the literature to guide your own research. Block at least one hour per week to do literature searches. Participate in journal clubs and suggest new articles of interest to the lab. Sharing scientific literature with multiple members of the lab helps us all to stay informed, innovate, and achieve excellence.
Maintain detailed, organized, and accurate laboratory records. Be aware that your notes,
records, and all tangible research data are my property as the lab director. When you leave the lab, I encourage you to take copies of your data with you. One full set of all data must stay in the lab with appropriate and accessible documentation. Regularly backup your computer data to Box or, even better, let the lab purchase an external hard drive for you to back up your data, which I will take when you leave.
Be responsive to advice and constructive criticism. The feedback you get from me, your
colleagues, your committee members, and your course instructors is intended to improve your scientific work. In parallel, I will work to be responsive to your advice and constructive criticism in all I do.
Be mindful of the constraints on my time. When we set a deadline, I block off time to read and respond to your work. If I do not receive your materials, I will move your project to the end of my queue. Allow a minimum of one week prior to submission deadlines for me to read and respond to short materials, such as conference abstracts, and three weeks for me to work on manuscripts or grant proposals. Please do not assume I can read materials within a day or two, especially when I am traveling.
Remember that all of us are “new” at various points in our careers. If you feel uncertain,
overwhelmed, or want additional support, please ask for it. I welcome these necessary conversations.
Be prompt. Respond promptly (in most cases, within 48 hours) to emails from anyone in our lab group and show up on time and prepared for meetings. If you need time to gather information in response to an email, please acknowledge receipt of the message and indicate when you can provide the requested information.
Discuss policies on work hours, sick leave, and vacation with me directly. Consult with me and notify fellow lab members in advance of any planned absences. Graduate students can expect to work an average of 50 hours per week on lab work, although physical presence in the lab may not be a part of this hourly recommendation; post-docs and staff can similarly expect about 50 hours per week. I will not record your time away from work unless it interferes with research progress. I generally ask that most lab members not exceed three weeks of personal travel away from the lab in any given year; however, exceptions will be made if discussed with me in advance. I believe that work-life balance and vacation time are essential for creative thinking and good health and will not discourage these activities. Be aware, however, that there will be periods – especially before conferences, grant deadlines, and reporting deadlines — that demand greater work and may not be ideal to schedule time away.
Discuss policies on authorship with me before beginning any projects to ensure that we agree. I expect you to submit relevant research results in a timely manner. Barring unusual circumstances, it is my policy that students are first-author on all work for which they took the lead on data collection and preparation of the initial draft of the manuscript.
Help other students with their projects and mentor/train other students. Encourage
undergraduates in the lab to help write manuscripts. If you wish to add other individuals as authors to your papers, please discuss this with me early and before potential co-authors.
Provide service to the community. Service to our community can mean reviewing journal
manuscripts that will sharpen your scientific perspectives, critical thinking, and presentation skills. It can also mean hosting a lab tour, attending a recruiting event, presenting a poster at a symposium, speaking on a panel, editing a website, joining a march, or showing solidarity with your scientific peers. Their schedules are serendipitous — at some point in your development, you must serve the lab, departmental, University, and scientific communities.
Contribute to grant writing and grant progress reports. Grant writing is another useful
developmental activity, particularly for postdoctoral research trainees. As your research ideas take shape, you may help write a grant proposal. This is especially useful if your research drifts from the lab’s funded project(s). Many of my graduate students and postdoctoral research associates wrote a proposal to fund their research, and several transferred that language and data to begin their independent research career.
Make progress toward graduation if a PhD student, and make progress toward independence if a postdoctoral trainee. While students have varied goals and timelines, it’s important that all students continue to make progress through the graduate program’s milestones. These are found in the departmental bulletin as a PDF at the website that outlines the PhD degree. Postdoctoral research associates can only hold that title for five years, so plans for a transition should begin after three years of holding that title to best prepare for a productive future.
Network with research colleagues. I collaborate with many, and I will introduce you to my
network as appropriate. Networking with other scholars is particularly important when
- planning your job search
- pursuing research questions or methods outside my expertise
- choosing a Committee member outside of our department
- working on a collaborative project on which it will be helpful for you to gain input from other research colleagues.
You will present your own research, but I may also present your research under my name
or the name of the laboratory. If you generate tables / graphs / literature reviews for a project, but do not introduce new insights or make suggestions for new directions, I will generally represent your work myself — in meetings with colleagues, at conferences, and in published papers. Once you own the work by determining the direction and teaching the research team something more than summarizing other research, then you present the work as your own. As I travel the country and globe to talk about the lab’s findings, I may also present your work to others but will always credit you by name and often by photo.
I am committed to mentoring you, even after you leave my lab. I am committed to your
education and training while you are in my lab and to guiding your career development – to the degree you wish – long after you leave. I will introduce you to those I have historically mentored or continue to mentor, as they may also serve as strong mentors to you moving forward. I will provide honest letters of evaluation for you when you request them.
After graduation or departing from the lab. I remain devoted to supporting the continued
professional development of all my lab alumni. Like so many relationships forged during a dramatic period of development, the bond between advisor and student is typically a powerful one — if not always a positive one. Mentoring does not end upon leaving the laboratory. I help former students and trainees navigate their careers and recommend opportunities to them. As you continue your career, your accomplishments honor me
and enhance the network for all of my trainees.