Lab Culture

This text is meant to provide a guideline of what you can expect when joining the Tropical Ecology Lab. It might be updated periodically, when needed, with contributions from all lab members.

Our values in a nutshell

In our lab we value diversity in all its forms and dimensions. We value cultural, racial, socioeconomic and biological diversity and respect each person’s identity, background, status, abilities and opinions. We believe we all have space to learn and grow from each other’s experiences. Thus, our lab is committed to creating an inclusive, equitable, accessible, welcoming and safe environment. As such, our lab has zero tolerance for any form of discrimination. Our lab is also committed to educating ourselves about systemic discrimination against historically, systemically, and persistently marginalized communities and to creating a welcoming, inclusive, and supportive environment for all.

General rules of conduct

Be kind to yourself. Be mindful of your limits, and do not exhaust yourself.
Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other contributors.
Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate.
Please make an effort to make an inclusive environment for everyone. Give everyone a chance to talk and an opportunity to contribute.
All communication – online and in person – should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds.

What you can expect from me

My primary goal is to help you make the transition from a student to a colleague and to foster your career. I will help you to achieve your goals to the best of my ability, as such, we will discuss periodically here you are with your goals.

I will set the broad scientific direction for the lab and will help you to find/refine your research topic and to help you write grants to fund your research.
I am committed to mentoring you now and in the future. I will advise and guide your research, training, and career development while in my lab and hopefully will also serve as a colleague and mentor in the future.
I will be available for 1-1 meetings once every two weeks One-to-one meetings are normally used to discuss research ideas, go through new results, overcome research obstacles, review writing for papers or applications, and develop strategies to attain career goals. You should come prepared to present and discuss your recent research and next steps.
I will provide timely review of research, when needed. Please provide enough time (+1 week) for feedback on documents, manuscripts, grants, etc.). Better if we plan a schedule together. If I take too long, please don’t hesitate to remind me.
At some points you might need more frequent meetings (to brainstorm a grant, write a paper, etc.), and that is ok. We just need to work on a proper schedule ahead of time.
We will also hold weekly lab meetings to grow as a group.
I will provide a work environment that is intellectually stimulating, supportive, safe, and free from harassment. If you are having any problems, either work-related or personal, that are affecting you professionally or personally, please talk to me. No need to give me details, but I am here to listen and guide you to the best of my abilities.

What I expect from you

I am here to help you advance your career and goals. So, I expect you to be self motivated, curious,

kind, open minded, productive and eager to learn. Ask questions, challenge yourself, take risks! Remember that I am here to guide you, but this is your path to become and expert, so you need to take the lead on your research.

I expect you to be respectful, tolerant of, and work collegially with all lab members.
I expect you to be in the lab, ideally office hours, but this can vary. The importance of these is engaging with the lab group and help create a cohesive and dynamic working environment. We all learn from each other, for that we need to interact.
I expect you to engage in potential opportunities to build your career: attend seminars, ideally ask questions. Aim to assist to at least one scientific meeting every year. Apply for traveling grants to attend meetings and also, to conduct fieldwork.
Set a time to read scientific papers, ideally every day. Might sound hard, but this will be part of your scientific life. For now, try to keep up with the papers related to your own research.
I expect you to be independent and teach yourself. Search for courses and ask your peers. Remember, your goal during this time is to learn as much as you can!
I expect you to give. As a new student, you will likely receive mentorship and support from senior lab members, I expect you to also support junior students (including undergraduates) that join the lab.
Keep notes of your work, particularly of your code and your experiments, your future self and your collaborators need to know what you are doing. If you do field work, keep clear notes of your data and set a space (part of a notebook) for overall observations. Keeping your eyes open to learn about natural history is the best way to truly understand nature (and also, it can become your first manuscript!).
I expect you to have a clear plan to graduate in 5 years. This means learning some time-management and having a clear goal. Although I am aware that unforeseen circumstances might cause a PhD to take longer, try to stay in your path and devote your time an energy to your main goal: having a complete dissertation that sets your research path.
If you are I expect that you will lead a minimum of one peer-reviewed paper on the topic of the project funding your position each year during the time you are in my lab.

Lab space

The lab space belongs to everyone. I expect that lab members will respect the space and other members using this space. The lab does have a “relaxing” area, where you can grab a coffee/tea, eat together and have small meetings. When having a break, please be mindful of other people in the lab, do not engage in long and loud meetings when others are working. People should NOT have to leave the lab to find a quieter space to work, the lab should be a safe and comfortable space to work. If you like working with music or need to watch something online, use headphones.

Funding

Graduate students

It is your responsibility to know the rules and requirements for your graduate program and are responsible to ensure that you are in compliance.

Academic year funding: The department guarantees PhD students five years of funding during the academic years (fall and spring terms). Funding past these time frames is not guaranteed. Funding in the department is most often as teaching assistant position (TA) which means you will be employed to teach for 20 hours per week, and you will pursue your graduate coursework and research outside of this employment time. On the good side, teaching is a great experience and it will weight heavily on your CV if you are looking for a faculty job in the future.
Funding with a fellowship, on the other hand, provides full-time support to work on your graduate research -so you can focus 100% on your PhD-, but you need to apply and compete for funds. Writing proposals is an excellent and highly transferable experience and receiving fellowships will increase your competitiveness for jobs, thus, I expect you to write and submit fellowship proposals. Some examples of funding opportunities are listed below.
Summer funding: Ideally, you will be funded over the summers while you are a graduate student. You should make a concerted effort to obtain summer funding on your own every summer. I might be able to fund you for some summers, but that will depend on the money I have available, so it is not guaranteed.
Funding opportunities: Please take a look at the following -not exhaustive- funding opportunities and let me know if you are interested in pursuing any of them.

Postdocs

Postdoc time is the best time to learn new research skills and publish high-quality studies to secure permanent research positions in academia or industry. Postdocs in the lab are generally expected to lead the design and execution of research projects, coordinate project logistics with collaborators, and publish results in peer-reviewed journals. Postdocs that are hired through grants are expected to complete specific research projects by some deadlines to meet the grant objectives. Besides that, postdocs are encouraged to pursue additional research projects with others inside or outside the lab as long as the main project goals do not suffer.

When possible, postdocs should also apply for grants and fellowships. Check below for some funding opportunities:

Collaboration, data, publications and authorship

We communicate our science and our results through publications. The core part of your job is to publish good science in a timely manner. We support collaboration as a better model than competition within the lab and with colleagues at LSU and elsewhere. We are advocates of Open Science and reproducibility. Whenever possible, the data and software we generate is released under open licenses, a contribution we view as more important than simply churning out more papers (there may be cases for not sharing data openly immediately). Ideally, all code should be on Github as you work, and at the end of each of each project, it should be permanently archived in a repository (e.g. Zenodo).

It is IMPORTANT that you backup your data and your code! Here is a good source to learn more about coding standards and best practices.

Authorship should be openly discussed at the beginning of a project. This can change as responsibilities change, but it is good to discuss authorship multiple times in the span of a project. Often, you earn first authorship if you do most of the data collection, analysis, and writing. You will be the first author of all manuscripts directly deriving from your dissertation. You earn first co-authorship if you and someone else did equal or equivalent amounts of work in all or different stages. If you are coauthor, you must have contributed with some work on the paper, and must have read, understood, and approved the manuscript. Remember, your name will be on the paper, you should be able to defend it. For students: You should aim to publish your research as you go. Do not wait to publish until the end of your PhD.

Other aspects of Graduate School

Committee meetings: I recommend you take full advantage of your committee meetings, which in most cases, should occur yearly. You won’t have all of your committee members in one room too often during your training so make sure you are extremely well-prepared. You should send the committee an agenda and any documents you want them to read at least one week before the meeting. During the meeting, you will generally give an oral presentation, letting people know the very specific goals of the meeting first and then proceeding systematically through the areas you need to address. If you aren’t prepared for your meeting, it will be clear to the committee.
Dissertation: Your PhD dissertation should comprise at least three high-quality manuscripts, in which you are the first author. You will likely also have to write a short introduction tying together your chapters and possibly a (very short) conclusion section, depending on what your committee requests. At least one of the manuscripts should be accepted for publication before you defend your dissertation.

[The first version of this document was largely inspired and based on Daijiang Li’s Li Lab Code of Conduct]