UF Coastal and Marine Ecology Lab Mentoring Contract
Updated March 2023
Lab Goals
I view my lab group (undergraduate students, graduate students, lab volunteers, and lab staff) as a team whose collective goals are (1) to write successful grants that will fund research to inform the scientific community, (2) to carefully and ethically conduct that research, (3) to share those results with the broader community including decision makers, and (4) to train the next generation of scientists.
I am committed to providing you with the resources and the skills you need to achieve those goals and in general expect hard work, attention to detail, enthusiasm, honesty, respect, and collaboration in return.
Expectations
All members of this lab group (undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, staff, volunteer) are unique and valued. Some lab members are co-advised. I view those members as full, equal lab members and typically have the same expectations. I do, however, realize that double lab meetings, etc. can become a burden. If that is the case, we can revisit these expectations. Further, there are some cases where I am clearly the secondary mentor and thus expectations may be fewer. In all of these cases, we should talk about expectations early and often.
It is expected that you help maintain an inclusive, safe environment for all lab members regardless of status (grad, undergrad, postdoc, staff,etc) or seniority, gender identify and expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability, physical appearance, race, age, socioeconomic background, and/or nationality. It is also expected that you report any problems that arise promptly. In addition to reporting issues directly to me, you may also report issues to your grad or undergraduate coordination, the department chair, or to any of these UF programs:
My goal is to help you succeed. For students, we will use the UF IDP plan as a guide to talk about career goals and skills needed to achieve those goals. Honesty and openness are essential to this process. I cannot help you if I don’t understand your aspirations or your background. For full time TEAMS staff, we will use the UF evaluation process. For others, we will use regularly scheduled meetings. If these mechanisms for discussion aren’t working for you, please let me know.
Every student in the lab shares the goal of completing your degree. It is your responsibility to read, understand, and track the requirements outlined in the graduate student handbook. It is your responsibility to keep up with assignments and maintain acceptable grades. If you are having issues, please talk with me.
Every member of the lab is expected to participate in research. I expect you to keep up with the primary literature. Reading literature will give you research ideas, will guide your work and ensure that your experiments are original contributions, and will help you become a better writer. I expect you to take initiative and read on your own (a paper a week is a good minimum goal); however, we will periodically discuss papers as a group towards this goal as well.
Good data records are essential. Each lab member will discuss data management — lab notes, data storage and archives, and sample storage and disposal with me since we all collect different forms of data that will need to be stored / archived slightly differently. All paper data sheets should be archived in an organized way – I suggest a binder kept in the lab, but I am open if another option works for you. For electronic data, please maintain it or back it up regularly on the cloud—UF provides cloud resources. I will provide you a shared onedrive folder. You can either use this as your regular backup or just an archive, which I expect you to update annually at a minimum. We can work together on that file structure, but I expect a sub-folder for each project and within that subfolder, a folder for a log (what you did, when you did it, where they samples are physically located, etc), a folder for data, a folder for statistics, a folder for graphs / pictures, and a folder for reports / manuscripts. All files should be named with the date—for examples YYMMDD_Reynolds_IRL_Spartina_genotypes. If you are part of a project with an agreed upon data management plan, you should follow that management plan, but also copy data into our shared one drive folder at least annually. You do not need to reformat or reorganize data in a second way.
Research in my lab often require field work and use of expensive, delicate equipment. I expect that you will help your lab mates with their projects and that they will help with yours. Be a team player! I expect that you will often use volunteers and you are responsible for making sure they have filled out any necessary paperwork. I expect that you will read manuals and seek training to properly care for a maintain equipment and that you will participate in training newer students. If it is equipment that is often used by many people (e.g. trucks and boats), you should plan ahead and sign up for use on the calendar. If something breaks, tell me right away so that we can arrange to fix or replace it. Don’t panic over broken equipment. Mistakes happen. But it is not acceptable to return something broken or damaged without taking the steps necessary to fix it. It is also imperative that we keep physical spaces (lab, trucks, boats, greenhouses) clean, and this is a collective responsibility. Clean up after yourself. Move samples to long term storage (either I or the lab manager will help you find a space) when they are no longer actively needed. The lab manager will organize deeper clean up events as needed, and I expect everyone to participate. If things are getting too cluttered or messy, let me and/or the lab manager know ASAP.
While it is my job to provide you with the resources that you need to succeed, I expect you to help with that. I expect you to make connections within the university and within the field. These people will become your committee members and your collaborators. I expect you to search out opportunities and to write grants. For MS students, I require at least 1 fellowship/grant proposal submission, and I expect more from PhD students. Grant writing expectations will differ for different lab staff, and expectations will be discussed individually.
Both my and your reputation coming out is dependent on peer reviewed publication. I expect MS students to be the lead author on at least one peer reviewed publication and PhD students to lead at least 3 publications. At the time of graduation, I expect that at least one of these will be submitted, and I expect the others to be submitted within ~1 year. Number of publications for lab staff will vary depending on the position, and expectations will be discussed individually. There is not an expectation of undergraduate publication; however, there are opportunities if desired. In all cases, I maintain an inclusive process—significant contribution to a project should always results in co-authorship.
Conference presentations are another way to communicate work, and I expect graduate students to present at meetings. Travel fellowships are available from the university and from national societies if grant money is not available. I will help you identify and apply for these opportunities. My goal is to support at least one conference per year. Lab staff should also participate in conferences as opportunities are available. And I will support active undergraduates doing independent research to attend conferences as much as possible.
A goal for our lab group is also sharing results with the broader community include decision makers. Participation in ongoing outreach events is expected, and initiation of extension activities is encouraged. Good records of these events and their outcomes is required.
Success in research often requires after hours work. I expect you to professionally manage your schedules, including work travel and vacations. I will be flexible in your work hours and work location, as long as professional progress is being made. However, please let me know when you plan to be away for travel, etc..
Graduate school is hard. Field work is time consuming and tiring. Lab work is tedious. Keeping up with the literature is daunting. I expect that you will work together and help each other out.
What you should expect from me
I will meet with the group as a whole weekly or bi-weekly. I will also be available for regular one on one meetings (weekly or biweekly). You should also expect for me to promptly respond to emails during business hours.
You should expect me to be your advocate and cheer leader. Come to me if you have any issues, and I will do what I can to help.
Yearly evaluation
We will use the UF IDP program for graduate student yearly evaluation. We will use the UF eval system for staff. And for OPS staff and graduate students, we will use regular meetings. You should use those tools to evaluate your progress as well as give me feedback as an advisor. In return you should expect me to give you candid feedback on your work and your progress towards your degree or towards shared goals. In addition, we will revisit this document annually as a group to re-evaluate it as a tool. This type of continued, open communication is a critical step in the process to ensure we take care of minor issues before they become major issues.
Updated March 2023
Lab Goals
I view my lab group (undergraduate students, graduate students, lab volunteers, and lab staff) as a team whose collective goals are (1) to write successful grants that will fund research to inform the scientific community, (2) to carefully and ethically conduct that research, (3) to share those results with the broader community including decision makers, and (4) to train the next generation of scientists.
I am committed to providing you with the resources and the skills you need to achieve those goals and in general expect hard work, attention to detail, enthusiasm, honesty, respect, and collaboration in return.
Expectations
All members of this lab group (undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, staff, volunteer) are unique and valued. Some lab members are co-advised. I view those members as full, equal lab members and typically have the same expectations. I do, however, realize that double lab meetings, etc. can become a burden. If that is the case, we can revisit these expectations. Further, there are some cases where I am clearly the secondary mentor and thus expectations may be fewer. In all of these cases, we should talk about expectations early and often.
It is expected that you help maintain an inclusive, safe environment for all lab members regardless of status (grad, undergrad, postdoc, staff,etc) or seniority, gender identify and expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability, physical appearance, race, age, socioeconomic background, and/or nationality. It is also expected that you report any problems that arise promptly. In addition to reporting issues directly to me, you may also report issues to your grad or undergraduate coordination, the department chair, or to any of these UF programs:
- UF Ombuds Office: https://www.ombuds.ufl.edu/
- UF HR Options for Reporting Concerns and Filing Complaints: https://hr.ufl.edu/manager-resources/employee-relations/employee-inquiry-and-complaint-procedures/complaint-filing-options/
- UF Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action: https://hr.ufl.edu/manager-resources/recruitment-staffing/institutional-equity-diversity/
My goal is to help you succeed. For students, we will use the UF IDP plan as a guide to talk about career goals and skills needed to achieve those goals. Honesty and openness are essential to this process. I cannot help you if I don’t understand your aspirations or your background. For full time TEAMS staff, we will use the UF evaluation process. For others, we will use regularly scheduled meetings. If these mechanisms for discussion aren’t working for you, please let me know.
Every student in the lab shares the goal of completing your degree. It is your responsibility to read, understand, and track the requirements outlined in the graduate student handbook. It is your responsibility to keep up with assignments and maintain acceptable grades. If you are having issues, please talk with me.
Every member of the lab is expected to participate in research. I expect you to keep up with the primary literature. Reading literature will give you research ideas, will guide your work and ensure that your experiments are original contributions, and will help you become a better writer. I expect you to take initiative and read on your own (a paper a week is a good minimum goal); however, we will periodically discuss papers as a group towards this goal as well.
Good data records are essential. Each lab member will discuss data management — lab notes, data storage and archives, and sample storage and disposal with me since we all collect different forms of data that will need to be stored / archived slightly differently. All paper data sheets should be archived in an organized way – I suggest a binder kept in the lab, but I am open if another option works for you. For electronic data, please maintain it or back it up regularly on the cloud—UF provides cloud resources. I will provide you a shared onedrive folder. You can either use this as your regular backup or just an archive, which I expect you to update annually at a minimum. We can work together on that file structure, but I expect a sub-folder for each project and within that subfolder, a folder for a log (what you did, when you did it, where they samples are physically located, etc), a folder for data, a folder for statistics, a folder for graphs / pictures, and a folder for reports / manuscripts. All files should be named with the date—for examples YYMMDD_Reynolds_IRL_Spartina_genotypes. If you are part of a project with an agreed upon data management plan, you should follow that management plan, but also copy data into our shared one drive folder at least annually. You do not need to reformat or reorganize data in a second way.
Research in my lab often require field work and use of expensive, delicate equipment. I expect that you will help your lab mates with their projects and that they will help with yours. Be a team player! I expect that you will often use volunteers and you are responsible for making sure they have filled out any necessary paperwork. I expect that you will read manuals and seek training to properly care for a maintain equipment and that you will participate in training newer students. If it is equipment that is often used by many people (e.g. trucks and boats), you should plan ahead and sign up for use on the calendar. If something breaks, tell me right away so that we can arrange to fix or replace it. Don’t panic over broken equipment. Mistakes happen. But it is not acceptable to return something broken or damaged without taking the steps necessary to fix it. It is also imperative that we keep physical spaces (lab, trucks, boats, greenhouses) clean, and this is a collective responsibility. Clean up after yourself. Move samples to long term storage (either I or the lab manager will help you find a space) when they are no longer actively needed. The lab manager will organize deeper clean up events as needed, and I expect everyone to participate. If things are getting too cluttered or messy, let me and/or the lab manager know ASAP.
While it is my job to provide you with the resources that you need to succeed, I expect you to help with that. I expect you to make connections within the university and within the field. These people will become your committee members and your collaborators. I expect you to search out opportunities and to write grants. For MS students, I require at least 1 fellowship/grant proposal submission, and I expect more from PhD students. Grant writing expectations will differ for different lab staff, and expectations will be discussed individually.
Both my and your reputation coming out is dependent on peer reviewed publication. I expect MS students to be the lead author on at least one peer reviewed publication and PhD students to lead at least 3 publications. At the time of graduation, I expect that at least one of these will be submitted, and I expect the others to be submitted within ~1 year. Number of publications for lab staff will vary depending on the position, and expectations will be discussed individually. There is not an expectation of undergraduate publication; however, there are opportunities if desired. In all cases, I maintain an inclusive process—significant contribution to a project should always results in co-authorship.
Conference presentations are another way to communicate work, and I expect graduate students to present at meetings. Travel fellowships are available from the university and from national societies if grant money is not available. I will help you identify and apply for these opportunities. My goal is to support at least one conference per year. Lab staff should also participate in conferences as opportunities are available. And I will support active undergraduates doing independent research to attend conferences as much as possible.
A goal for our lab group is also sharing results with the broader community include decision makers. Participation in ongoing outreach events is expected, and initiation of extension activities is encouraged. Good records of these events and their outcomes is required.
Success in research often requires after hours work. I expect you to professionally manage your schedules, including work travel and vacations. I will be flexible in your work hours and work location, as long as professional progress is being made. However, please let me know when you plan to be away for travel, etc..
Graduate school is hard. Field work is time consuming and tiring. Lab work is tedious. Keeping up with the literature is daunting. I expect that you will work together and help each other out.
What you should expect from me
I will meet with the group as a whole weekly or bi-weekly. I will also be available for regular one on one meetings (weekly or biweekly). You should also expect for me to promptly respond to emails during business hours.
You should expect me to be your advocate and cheer leader. Come to me if you have any issues, and I will do what I can to help.
Yearly evaluation
We will use the UF IDP program for graduate student yearly evaluation. We will use the UF eval system for staff. And for OPS staff and graduate students, we will use regular meetings. You should use those tools to evaluate your progress as well as give me feedback as an advisor. In return you should expect me to give you candid feedback on your work and your progress towards your degree or towards shared goals. In addition, we will revisit this document annually as a group to re-evaluate it as a tool. This type of continued, open communication is a critical step in the process to ensure we take care of minor issues before they become major issues.
