Lab Social Contract

Dear Prospective and Current Members of the Schloss Lab,

What I describe below is a social contract that I would like to enter into with you and have you enter into with the other members of the lab. I am very proud of the community of scientists we have attracted to the research group. You have been selected to join the lab because Pat and the rest of the group think you’re awesome. It is important to me that we maintain a supportive environment so that everyone can do their best science. Before the science, my goal is to create an inclusive educational environment where we can grow as people and scientists to achieve our long term scientific and career goals. I might go so far as to say that the science is a vehicle to help individuals develop a long list of skills that may or may not propel them forward as a microbiome scientist - but they will help them to achieve their career goals. Our goals are going to be different for each person and will evolve over time.

Undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral education are critical components for most careers in science where people value independence and upward mobility. I also care deeply about the development of professional staff in the lab and want to see their skills and interests grow over their tenure in the lab. Although we all differ in our backgrounds, expertise, goals, and interests I seek to maintain a relatively flat organizational structure where each person can have as much access to me as they need. At the same time, I expect everyone in the group to demonstrate leadership by sharing their personal expertise to help advance the work of others.

You should have a list of things you would like to learn and apply to your research or keep in your back pocket. These can be as simple as improving time management to learning d3js. You will never develop these skills unless you engage in deliberate practice to develop them. Plan ahead at the scale of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly for when and how you will develop these skills. The transition to graduate school can be difficult for many because for the first time you have a significant amount of freedom to set your own schedule. You can avoid a lot of problems that still plague full professors by realizing this and taking control of your own time commitments. You can’t do all of the things - so what will you do that advance your research and your career?

Anyone that knows me will attest that I have very high expectations of myself, members of my research group, and members of our scientific community. You are in the lab because we think you can exceed these expectations. Everyone that has come before you in the lab has done it. You can do it. My expectations for each member of the research group is summarized here:

Safety

I care deeply about the physical and mental health of the people that work in and around my lab. Beyond your own safety, failure to follow proper laboratory practices could put the safety of other lab members and the viability of the lab as an entity into jeopardy. With this in mind…

• Familiarize yourself with the lab’s chemical hygiene plan
• Follow the plan
• If you need personal protective equipment (PPE), order it - no questions asked
• If your health status changes (including pregnancy), tell me in private so that we can investigate how to best accommodate your needs
• If you see someone acting in an unsafe manner, simply remind them what they should be doing
• If you are about to take a course of antibiotics, you should remove yourself from the laboratory until a week after finishing the course of antibiotics. There is a real risk that you could develop a Clostridium difficile Infection if you do not
• Never gush to Pat about Harvard^*

General expectations for labbies

• Effort - Your success won’t be dictated by working Y hours. Your mental health and work-life balance is important. Read this blog post by Pat about Your Personal Effort Report. Making your pie chart isn’t necessarily the best option (i.e. working more hours), perhaps it would be better to adjust your effort distribution
  • Seek to improve yourself without feeling the need to compete against your colleagues. Others’ success will not prevent yours
  • Be your own worst critic
  • If you are not passionate about what you are doing. Bring it up to Pat and let’s find something that gets you excited
  • Being present N hours isn’t the same as working N hours
• Research
  • I have a zero tolerance policy towards plagiarism and data fabrication
  • Each Monday morning, email me a weekly update on last week’s goals, what you accomplished, plans for the next week, progress towards achieving long term goals, and what you need from me
  • Present at a national meeting each year (see below)
  • Apply for any and all funding that is available for research and travel
• Reading - Always have a paper that you can read during any gaps in your day. Although no one can stay on top of the literature, the best scientists I have interacted with are constantly looking for ways to build off of the work they are reading
  • Read broadly and within your special area
  • Sign up for e-TOC alerts; review your search terms regularly
  • google scholar and PubMed have services that will deliver papers that match search queries to your email on a regular basis
• Writing - It is impossible to find consistent, large blocks of time to write and so we go a few weeks with out writing. Writing is a skill that must be practiced and critiqued
  • Spend at least 30 minutes a day writing
  • Doesn’t matter what the topic is, just write
• Citizenship - Provide support to colleagues in the lab by reading drafts, engaging in discussions, and being a positive influence
  • Care about each other - develop empathy
  • Acknowledge and build off the work of others in the lab
  • Share your “life hacks” with other members of the lab
  • Give information about career development opportunities as you learn of them
• Lab meetings - Our weekly lab meeting is a training activity that includes top-down (me to you) and peer-to-peer (you to everyone else) instruction and feedback. Regardless of whether you are in the “instructor” or “learner” role at any given moment, we will benefit from these activities proportional to the effort that you put into them
  • There is significant latitude for how you approach leading your segment of a lab meeting - feel free to experiment
  • The slides for your research talk, papers for journal club, and anything that needs to be downloaded or installed, should be announced two business days before your lab meeting presentation
  • Everyone is expected to read the slides and paper before lab meeting
  • Only one person speaks at a time
• Seminars - After lab meetings, the microbiome group and departmental seminars are more formal venues to present your research. These are significant career development opportunities that allow you to practice a talk before presenting at a conference or interviewing for your next job
  • Plan presentation date to work with my schedule
  • Give me complete slides 10 days in advance of talk
  • Practice talk with me and lab
  • Practice talk with your colleagues
• Vacation - It is frequently helpful to step away from the lab and reset. I will not police the number of days of vacation you take each year, I will depend on you to keep track of your needs and available vacation days
  • Eligible for 22 days of paid vacation per year in addition to holidays and season days
  • Please let me know in advance, I’d rather not find out that you are in some exotic destination from a colleague or via social media. I have some responsibility for your safety and that’s hard to do if I don’t know where you are
  • Don’t tell me you are going on vacation, ask me if it’s ok. Invariably, I will say, “yes”. But if vacations become too frequent given your work commitments and progress, we may need to have a longer discussion
  • Please put when you will be away on the lab Google calendar
• Personal well-being - You are important to me and this includes your physical and mental health. I am not a physician or therapist but I can help you to find resources and we can work together to accommodate your needs.
  • Nearly every person who has ever worked in my research group has had a personal, physical, and/or psychological issue while they worked in the lab. I expect that you will too. If I can, I want to help you, but I cannot read minds and bodies
  • If you are sick physically or mentally, I need to know. If you are pregnant I need to know (and congrats!)
  • We can work out leaves of absence, reduced hours, new projects, altered expectations, etc
  • Respect and uphold all relevant University policies regarding professional conduct, including but not limited to the Code of Academic Conduct, University Policy on Nondiscrimination, Sexual Harassment, and Student Records and Privacy.
• Social media - Twitter, Facebook, and Slack are tools that we use in the lab to advance our research
  • Do not call out a lab member or me on social media. Be aware of how others may view your comments and how those might reflect on the group. If you have a problem with someone in the group, resolve the issue with them personally or through a third party.
  • Personal attacks and backbiting will not be tolerated on Slack. I am not subscribed to every channel in our account and will trust people to correct each other
  • Slack is not an appropriate forum for important interactions and conversations
  • Political and other divisive commentary should likely be left out of conversations on Slack. There is some leniency for such postings on #random

Specific expectations for each rank of Schlabbie…

Me

• I promise to give a damn
• Anything you tell me will be held in confidence - I will not discuss you with other members of the lab. I may seek mentoring advice from people I respect and will always do so with your best interest in mind
• I will fight like hell to keep funding
• I will do everything I can to mentor graduate students to receive a PhD in 5 years after joining my lab
• I will consult the lab when new people will potentially join us
• I will review drafts within a week of receiving them, but may tell you that more extensive time is needed to go over revisions
• I will make room on my schedule to meet with you within 3 days of request and will make room for a regularly scheduled weekly meeting if needed
• I will review your your Individual Development Plan (IDP) and provide written feedback regarding your work in the lab at least once a year. I will discuss these items with you in person
• I will give information about career development and funding opportunities as I learn of them
• I will be your biggest advocate - you should never fear that I will provide a negative letter of recommendation
• I will nominate you for awards as appropriate
• I will support you to attend one conference per year assuming you have a poster to present
• I will do my best to direct you along a project that is capable of generating 3 papers that belong together in a thesis (graduate students), 1 paper a year (postdocs), and liberally offer authorship to research staff. Co-authorship will also be liberally awarded to members of the lab in consultation with the lead author
• I will include you in ancillary papers as your availability permits
• I will invite you to work on side projects - it is up to you to say yes or no. But once you say “yes”, you cannot quit
• I will be enthusiastic about all everyone’s project and will tell you if you are taking it in a direction that I am not enthusiastic about
• Do my best to maintain a team of scientists that is demographically and scientifically diverse
• If you think that I have broken these promises, then you have the right to call me on it. If you do not think that is likely to be productive, you should contact the departmental chairperson, Dr. Harry Mobley or Rackham who can set up an independent arbitration process.

Undergraduate students

• Your priority should be your other coursework. We expect that you will need time off around tests, but you will need to tell us
• You will work under the direction of another member of the research group and need to establish and keep a consistent schedule
• Please ask questions, especially if there is something in a protocol that you do not understand. If something weird happens or you deviate from the protocol, tell someone.
• If asked, I will write letters of recommendation for you. I will seek input from your immediate mentor
• I am always happy to talk about your educational and career development plans. There are always questions that people have that I am happy to talk through with you
• If you would like to work over the summer, please let your mentor or me know so we can plan. We can usually make something work

Graduate students

• Obtain at least a B in each of your courses
• Pass preliminary exam on your first try
• Develop the concepts for your checkpoint proposal with me, but write it independently of me
• Investigate and apply for appropriate funding opportunities with discussion and advice from their faculty mentor(s)
• Complete and keep up to date your Individual Development Plan (IDP)
• At least two accepted peer-reviewed papers before you defend (but you will be able to get more than three). Note this is beyond the departmental requirement of one peer-reviewed publication
• As a senior graduate student, look for opportunities to mentor undergraduates
• Fight for your project - don’t let me break it up to give to someone else
• By the time you defend, you should be the smartest person in the room on your topic
• You have my priority
• Communicate your career goals to me as they develop
• If you are interested in TA-ing beyond the departmental requirements, speak with me before volunteering

Postdocs

• Finish papers from you PhD in a timely manner, preferably outside of normal business hours
• Talk with me about pursuing funding opportunities
• Work with me to find a project
• Own and drive your project
• Look to me more for suggests than direction
• Create a plan to average publishing at least one paper per year
• Look for opportunities to mentor undergraduates
• Complete and keep up to date your Individual Development Plan (IDP)
• Contracts are renewed each year depending on progress towards these goals
• My goal will be to give you three months notice if funding is short or I think it is time for you to move on
• When you start, you should have a good sense of where your career is going, communicate those to me so that I can help you to work towards them

Staff

• You report directly to me. If anyone asks you to do anything, tell them you need to talk to me first
• You will have a research project that you will work on with my direction
• Communicate your long term career goals to me so that I can help you
• You will likely be asked to entertain far more of my crazy ideas than anyone else in the lab
• Although you have finished (or paused) your formal training, I still expect you to continue to develop skills while you work in the lab

I want you to succeed. Although I’ve “made it” in science, my career is still very much in development. Just as your career development is dependent on me, I am dependent on you. I love working with developing scientists and enjoy the camaraderie, fresh ideas, and enthusiasm. If you think anything is missing from this social contract, please let me know. People in the lab know that I am willing to take more personal criticism than most PIs and look forward to growing with you.

Sincerely,

Pat

^* this is a joke, folks. a joke.

• Originally written February 2016; Revised May 2019