Mentoring compact- Postdoctoral

COAKER LAB MENTORING COMPACT (Postdoctoral & Project Scientist focused)
Updated 03-09-2023

GOALS
We seek to perform exciting research on plant-microbe interactions with translational potential to feed the world. We are interested in how plant immune receptors recognize pathogen invaders and how pathogen effectors drive host specificity. We strive to train the next generation of scientists in a rigorous but supportive research environment. We seek to publish high quality papers in the best conferences and journals. We want our research to provide a foundational understanding whose papers will be read five or ten years from now by other scientists to drive research questions.

INTRODUCTION
Agreements between junior researchers (undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral scientists) and their faculty supervisor (me) are often implicit. But an implicit agreement is little better than no agreement. This document makes things explicit. Much may be common knowledge, but writing down common expectations helps prevent misunderstandings.
If you have been invited to join my research group or are already a member, please read the whole thing carefully. If you have questions or concerns, please talk about them; the document is a work in progress and can be modified based on your input. I am excited to work with you and help you develop as a scientist and I work tirelessly to help advance the careers of my mentees throughout their time in my research group and after they have left my program.

MY RESPONSIBILITIES AND COMMITMENTS
I am excited to work with you in my research group and take my role as a mentor seriously. I realize each individual’s mentoring needs are unique and change over time. I am ambitious and have high standards for myself, and I expect the same from you. Working with trainees and contributing to their professional development is the most rewarding part of my job. My ideal is to help trainees develop into colleagues.

Throughout your time in my laboratory, I will be supportive, equitable, accessible, encouraging, and respectful. I will foster professional confidence and encourage intellectual development, critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity.
I will demonstrate respect for all lab members as individuals without regard to gender, race, national origin, religion, disability or sexual orientation. I will cultivate a culture of mutual respect among the entire laboratory.

I will be committed help provide financial resources for postdoctoral scientists to conduct their research. I have a good track record of obtaining federal grants from major granting agencies (NSF, NIH, USDA). I expect postdoctoral scientists write for eligible fellowship applications.

I will be committed to your research project. I will work with you to help guide and plan the research project, set attainable goals, and a timeline for completion of the project. I expect as a postdoc you will be responsible for guiding the project after the first few months in the lab, with general input from me.

If you pursue an academic position, I will work with you to help you take an independent project with you to start your own research group. I will help foster open lines of communication about your research interests and work with you to either (1) help you take a line of research with you to your own lab that we will not work on anymore and/or (2) give you time in my lab to help develop your own line of inquiry.

I will be committed to meeting one-on-one on a regular basis. I will regularly review your progress and provide timely feedback and goal setting advice. My schedule requires that we plan in advance for meetings to discuss your research every two weeks. If my door is open, you can stop in. We will generate an Individual Development Plan (IDP) and jointly review progress and goals every six months.

If I am concerned about your research progress, I will be upfront and directly address issues. If I notice a pattern of poor research productivity or time management, I will address these in a timely manner through a one-on-one conversation. We can jointly plan for how to get back on track.

I will promote training in professional skills needed for a successful career. These skills include but are not limited to oral and written communication, grant writing, management and leadership, collaborative research, responsible conduct of research, teaching, and mentoring. I will encourage you to seek opportunities to develop skills in these areas outside the lab as well.

I will create an environment in which trainees can discuss and explore career opportunities and paths that match their skills, values, and interests and be supportive of their career path choices. I will be accessible to give advice, feedback, and guidance/networking opportunities to help prepare for your career goals. I will provide letters of recommendation and use my network to help find a permanent position for you.

I will encourage you to seek input from multiple mentors and develop your own research network. I will help guide you, if necessary, in finding appropriate external mentors. One person cannot be all things. You need a team of individuals to help provide feedback and be in your corner. These external mentors will be your network as you move forward in a scientific career. However, it is up to YOU to cultivate these relationships. It is important to identify faculty mentors outside of UC Davis to expand your network.

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ME AND MY TIME DEMANDS

As a senior professor, I have many other calls on my time – from classroom teaching to curricular planning to helping run the university. Compared to a more junior professor, I am better connected and have more experience mentoring individuals, but I have less time for each trainee and more distractions to contend with.
I have a family and being present for them as well as pursing outside interests (mainly sports) is important for my sense of well-being. I try to work efficiently during the week and may not respond to emails on the weekend or provide last minute feedback/assistance.
I am an organized, detail-oriented person. I provide my best feedback when trainees organize data and presentations before meeting with me. If my door is open or partially open, it is OK to ask questions. I am here to help.
I am open to working on different plant and pathogen systems addressing questions in plant immunity and host specificity. I find different pathogens and plants fascinating. I love to discuss science with my trainees and bounce ideas around. I am open to taking a different approach to achieve a goal if you are able to effectively communicate WHY your approach is the best one. I am OK with scientific disagreements; you can tell me if you think I am wrong, I like that.
I like to celebrate lab successes by taking the group out to lunch or dinner together. I walk the Arboretum every day sometime between 11-1pm, you are welcome to join me if you want to chat. We have a yearly lab BBQ at my house.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITES AND LAB POLICIES
Work habits, organization, and time management

Acknowledge that you have the primary responsibility for successfully completing your project and your career trajectory. This includes commitment to your profession and in the lab. You should maintain a high level of professionalism, motivation, engagement, scientific curiosity, and ethical standards. I expect that postdoctoral scientists are able to design and troubleshoot experiments, as well as help come up with important scientific questions to pursue both within your project and for other lab projects.
Make the transition from trainee to expert. As a postdoc, I expect you to be a leader in the lab. A leader in your own project and the primary intellectual driver of it, but also a leader and point of contact for junior scientists. I expect you to spend time to train and guide junior members. I expect you to take advantage of mentorship training, come up with an intentional management plan for junior scientists, and run that by me for input. I expect you to seek out external input for your project and develop a network of scientists at UC Davis and elsewhere. This network can be other postdocs, senior grad students AND professors.
Ensure that you are prepared to meet with me during our bi-monthly meetings (2x month). Have your Electronic Lab Notebook up to date and any presentations or questions prepared. Communicate any new ideas or problems that you are facing. Remember, I cannot address or advise about issues you do not bring to my attention.
Try to figure out answers on your own before approaching me. My time is limited. Be resourceful and come up with potential experimental designs and approaches before meeting with me. Try to figure out answers to questions using your own resources first. If you have tried and need help, I am here. But I don’t want to waste time answering questions you can find out or troubleshoot.
Be around the laboratory during general working hours. I do not require people come and leave at a defined time each day. However, I expect that people are around during general working hours. Sometimes it is necessary to put in extra time to meet deadlines and also to come in to move experiments along during the weekend. You get out what you put in.
A good work-life balance is important. Everyone has a different balance that is optimal for their own happiness while still allowing you to achieve your career and scientific goals. Think about what your career goals are and the commitment it will take to get there. Science is a marathon. If you are disciplined and focused, you can make excellent progress and have good work-life integration. Take time for your physical and mental well-being. Do something you enjoy each day. Don’t work seven days a week; you will burn out and be less creative.

Vacation
Aside from university holidays, each person is given 4 weeks of vacation a year. Let our lab manager, Tanya Chilcote, know when you are planning on going on vacation so she can put it in the calendar. Let me know ahead of time if you will be going on vacation. I need to know three weeks in advance of a one-week vacation, and longer if you plan on taking all your vacation at once. You are responsible for organizing the care of your experiments, plants, and insect colonies while you are out. We do not get summers off or spring break off (this will be part of your vacation allotment).
Research meetings

Attend and actively participate in all group meetings. We meet weekly. Be prepared for each meeting. Be engaged and ask scientific questions. If you are presenting, have your slides organized and practice ahead of time.

Recordkeeping and laboratory notebooks

We keep most files in BOX and each student will be assigned a main folder. Back up your files. Put all presentations in BOX and have this up to date.
Glycerol stocks for strains and plasmids need to be formatted in the standard lab format and uploaded to BOX.
Large datasets (genomics, sc-RNAseq, proteomics) will be stored on our Google Drive AND backed up on a hard drive. Data should be deposited within one week of download.
For wet-lab work, we organize our data in Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) format in OneNote. I will evaluate your ELN twice a year to make sure it is organized properly. I will work with you if you need guidance.
I am a stickler for data integrity, this is one cornerstone of reproducible research. I find it difficult to work with individuals who do not have their data organized.

Data Analyses

I expect bar charts and other charts include raw data points.
Any statistical analyses presented on a slide/figure should be accompanied with a description of n, statistical test, etc.
If you are unsure of how to analyze your data, first try to figure out what you think the best approach is. Then contact me with your rationale and questions.

Professional interactions

I expect you to treat other scientists with respect and use professional e-mails.
If you are taking the lead on communicating with other groups outside of the lab for a research project, I expect to set up the initial collaboration. I expect to be ‘ccd on important e-mails. We should discuss ahead of time what constitutes an important communication and how you will approach taking the lead on communications.

Good citizenship

I expect you treat other lab members with respect.
You should be respectful of, tolerant of, and work collegially with all laboratory personnel. You will be an active contributing member to all team efforts and collaborations and will respect individual contributions. You will contribute to an environment that is safe, equitable, and free of harassment.
If you have issues with a particular lab member, think about the best way to approach the situation and try to have a conversation about your frustrations when you are calm. If you need help to manage these situations, talk to me.
I expect you to keep your lab area clean and plant growth areas maintained.
If you are the last to use a reagent, make more.
Sign up for equipment use and treat equipment with care.
Put in orders to Tanya before the last box is opened.
Behaviors that are not acceptable: dishonesty, withholding credit, hiding mistakes.

Developing a Research Network and Presentations – Super Important!

Good citizenship is valuable not only for the research group but also for the department and university. Please don’t hide in your office/lab. Get out there and meet people at group and departmental events. Introduce yourself to other scientists who you think can help with your research project, actively seek out external mentors – both within and outside the university.
Ask questions at research presentations, both internally and at scientific conferences. Make yourself visible.
Work to develop your research network first at UC Davis, then elsewhere. This is critical for the next stage of your career. Talk to me first about developing collaborations and who you are interested in sharing your data with and why. Then take ownership of that relationship and lead it.
Push to present your research at least twice per year outside of our lab meetings.

Authorship, Publications, and Sharing Materials

I do not decide order of authorship at the beginning of a project. Things can change over time and some individuals may end up contributing more than others. When it is clear we have a publishable story that is over half finished, I will meet with the group and we can decide authorship order.
I expect the first author to perform most of the work and take the lead on writing the paper. I will work with each person to help plan how to write each section, sketch out figures, provide general feedback, and polish each paper.
We practice open science. All scientific manuscripts are posted to bioRxiv before submitting to a peer-reviewed journal.
Before submitting any paper, I require all code is annotated and placed in GitHub, all raw sequencing or Mass Spectrometry data is deposited in a repository and formatted appropriately. All raw data for each figure (excel files, western blot images, qPCR, etc) is organized and placed online in BOX. We will meet and you can walk me through each component. Zip the folders and upload to Zenodo.
Plasmids will be deposited to Addgene before final acceptance of the manuscript and should be prepared during revisions. Contact researchers from other groups if they have supplied plasmids for their approval.
We will freely share published seed, plasmids, and strains when requested assuming the requesting lab has appropriate permits for receipt. Our lab manager, Tanya Chilcote, is responsible for distribution.
All completely sequenced plasmids will be deposited in BOX and noted on the master glycerol stocks. One folder for EV plasmids, a second for plasmids with insert.