In the past years, I have read mentoring philosophies from my mentors and colleagues. I think it is a great way to help mentees understand a mentor’s style and expectations before they decide to join their team. I also love the idea of setting up a transparent communication style from day one.
Every relationship requires some initial getting-to-know-each-other. There are varying mindsets that we could have upon a new relationship, but I choose to trust the person I select and enter the relationship with best intentions. That means I trust your integrity and work ethics; I trust that you will be responsible for your duties and will communicate with me when your responsibility is beyond your capacity. Underneath this trust is my hope that you enjoy our research and love your contribution to the population our research serves – because it is that enthusiasm that builds our work ethics and integrity.
It won’t be intuitive right away, or may never happen, for an individual to develop that enthusiasm. Not for me at the beginning of my PhD year – many things seemed more attractive than coding and reading literature. Then I programmed my first experiment on Matlab, tested my first participant, then many participants, did my first conference talk where I couldn’t understand any questions from the audience, and published my first paper… Small successes and positive feedback kept me going, to my way-too-long postdoc years, and to where I am now. Been there, done that.
As a mentor, I will support you in your career and personal growth with my best capacity. I acknowledge that we are different individuals, and our commitment to our work is determined by our motivation and ambition and is affected by other things happening in our life. I have learned from past years that we all have high and low peaks in our work energy and productivity. I have also learned to embrace my low peaks and take the much-needed breaks, and then manage to return to my normal academic life. If it is taking you significantly longer time than usual to manage a low peak, please communicate with me to let me know. If you feel comfortable doing so, please also let me know how I can be helpful.
It takes time and energy to bring in new members, so it is natural that I hope you will stay and grow. But I understand that some of you come for research exposure and will pursue a different path. I am committed to support you regardless, as it is truly a privilege to be your mentor at this stage of your life. Please think about how this research experience will be most beneficial to you, and communicate with me what you need. In this competitive world where everybody is doing a hundred different things to build up their resume and recommendation letters, what will make you stand out? Be responsible to your work, keep good communication with your team, be kind and respectful, have ambitions and adjust your ambitions as you learn about your capacity, and be a little stubborn with your goals – these are the traits that will be seen by people, get you strong recommendation letters, and make you stand out amongst your peers.
So, what are the bottom lines?
Time Commitment
Research jobs tend to have more flexible hours. We will not be clocking our team members on a day-to-day basis. The bottom line is that you are on top of your work and meet the goals. If the work scope or demands exceed what is reasonable, please communicate with me to adjust those goals. When reasonable goals are constantly not met, it becomes essential for me to know that you are working the number of hours your position expects.
Please understand that recruiting a lab member, whether part time or full time, means my time commitment to you. I will be putting you on my radar, prioritizing your needs, and constantly asking myself whether I have given you my best attention and resources. This is also why I am trying to be very mindful of the size of our lab, to make sure that I have enough capacity for everyone. However, this commitment is only valid if needed and well received by you. If our communication remains poor despite my best attempt, my attention and resources to you will naturally decrease and be allocated to more cost-effective matters.
Productivity
Publications and conference presentations are expected for full time lab members. There are no hard numbers of papers you should publish, although publication quality and productivity are key ingredients to success in academia. It is common that a good project may take years to be in a publishable form, but I strongly recommend that you start this process early. My papers rarely take less than 6 months to receive the green light from all co-authors to submit, and then it will take another long period of reviewing battles before finally being accepted for publication. Writing papers are like dancing, driving, swimming, playing piano … there is no other way to be good at it besides practicing to build the intuitions and “muscle memories”.
Productivity can also be demonstrated by conference presentations where you update the field on your progress. In our research field, someone who shows up to conferences (ARVO as a minimum) every year and brings new research will be noticed and remembered by the field. Presentation skills are essential for most careers, and again, there is no other way to be good at it besides practicing frequently.
For part time members, please decide the amount of work you are willing to take and the extent of research experience you wish to gain. If publications and conference presentations are something you are interested in, please communicate with me early on so that we can make plans and monitor our progress to make sure we are on the right track.
Group and Individual Meetings
We host weekly lab meetings. It is mandatory for all full time and part time lab members to attend. Lab meetings are essential to keep connected with the lab members and keep each other updated with our projects.
At the beginning of each semester, we will decide the theme of the lab meeting and presentation order. Typically, our lab meetings will take a two-part format. In the first part, lab members go around the table to update each other on their project progress. In the second part, a designated presenter will lead the discussion on a research topic and/or a topic “peripheral” to academia (e.g., mental stress, career path, time management etc.).
I meet with each full-time lab member weekly and with part-time lab members bi-weekly. I am always happy to meet outside of these scheduled meetings if needed. To make these meetings most productive, please keep a habit of taking notes. Before each meeting, I expect that both you and I will be bringing a list of items that we wish to discuss. After each meeting, I expect that both you and I will walk away with some to-do items on our notes. Note taking has been one of the lifesavers in my PhD and postdoc lives, and it is a good step towards managing our ambitions.
Closing Remarks
In a recent discussion with my colleagues around the topic of “leadership”, I joked that it is ironic that as trainees we were expected to focus on our schooling and research, but the moment we start to be a PI we are expected to know how to be a good leader.
Stepping back a bit, I want to acknowledge that being a good mentor or lab leader is not a necessity to being an excellent researcher. It is my decision and interest to be a good mentor as part of my life goals, as I have benefited greatly from a good mentor in my scientific and personal growth. I expect that I will update this mentoring philosophy as I grow in my role.
Thanks for reading.