Expectations

What we expect of you

• Hours:
  • The number of hours a week you are expected to contribute to the lab depends on the number of credits you signed up for (3 hours/week per credit).
  • This is a rough guide: you won’t be punching in and out and some weeks will be busier than others.
  • However, try to make sure you contribute this much on average across the semester.
• Minimum Commitment:
  • We hope that research assistants will remain involved with the lab for at least two semesters. If you don’t think this will be possible for you, please raise it early on.
• Showing up:
  • There’s no requirement to spend your research time in the lab, however, it is encouraged! Spending time at the lab is a great way to meet other lab denizens and soak up more about what’s going on in the lab.
  • There are weekly lab meetings which you are expected to join in person whenever possible, though remote options will also be available.
• Meetings:
  • You’ll be expected to meet with your research team regularly (for example, half an hour per week or an hour every two weeks).
  • This might mean meeting with the PI or with one of the graduate students depending on what kind of project you are involved in.
  • You can coordinate with your team whether in-person or remote meetings make most sense.
• Integrity:
  • One of the best things you can learn to do as a scientist is to be honest.
  • That especially means never fabricating data, p-hacking, or trying to make results look more favourable than they really are. But it also involves being open to admitting when you don’t know something or when you have made a mistake.
• Initiative:
  • While you’re not expected to know everything when you start, you will be expected to use your initiative to be proactive and learn about things that might be relevant.
  • Rather than waiting until your next meeting if you are unsure about something, it might be better to ask someone in the lab about it, try to look up the answer yourself, or (if feasible and not risky) to try multiple approaches yourself and see what works best.
• Determination:
  • Science is not always as glamorous as it looks on television. Quite a lot of what scientists do every day is incredibly boring careful, rigorous, and repetitive work.
  • It does take some determination to keep at these tasks over long periods of time and stay just as interested in the 350th datapoint you’ve analysed as in the first.
• Curiosity:
  • One of the most valuable things you can bring to the lab is your curiosity.
  • This might involve reading independently about topics you think are interesting and relevant to our research, but also means approaching research questions with an open mind.
  • You should try to avoid going into experiments already thinking you know what will happen or “want” to happen: but try to design experiments where any outcome would be interesting and surprising!

What you can expect from us

• Training:
  • Our primary goal is to provide you with the training you need in order to become a great scientist!
  • We will have check-ins at the beginning, middle, and end of each semester where we discuss your goals for the RAship, and whether you think you are getting the training you need.
  • If there are any specific things you would like to learn more about (coding, writing, psychological theories), we can make these explicit goals and try to orient your time here around them.
• Mentorship:
  • As part of working on a research project, you will get 1:1 mentorship from the PI and from graduate students.
  • Mentors in the lab can help to answer your questions about what a career in science might look like, and help you to strengthen your application if you are interested in grad school.
• Independence:
  • We recruit people who we think ultimately have the potential to lead their own research.
  • It takes time to become familiar with how to conduct a strong research project, so your initial time at the lab will probably involve gaining experience by contributing to projects that are led by others.
  • As you build experience, you will have the opportunity to gain more independence and ownership over aspects of the research project.
  • Eventually we hope you will be in a position to lead your own research projects if you have an idea that is in line with the goals of the lab and that is something that excites you!
• Authorship:
  • We believe that paper authorship should reflect the people who contributed to it.
  • That doesn’t mean you will automatically be an author on every paper that you contribute to. However, our goal is to have you contribute to projects in ways that are meaningful enough to warrant authorship.
  • We aim to have conversations about authorship early on in projects, and if you are curious please raise it with your research mentor.
• Letters of Recommendation:
  • Many people who go on to careers in academia or research need letters of recommendation from more senior people who have worked with them.
  • One of the great advantages of being a research assistant is you can get to know more senior academics and demonstrate your capabilities in a way that is often difficult to do during a lecture.
  • If you anticipate needing a letter, please let Cameron know a few weeks in advance and he will be happy to write one.
• Honest communication:
  • During our check-ins, we’ll try to give you honest feedback about what you are doing well, as well as areas where you could improve.
  • If there is anything you would like specific feedback on, please let your mentor know.
  • At the same time, we are happy to hear feedback about your experience in the lab and the mentorship you receive.

If something isn’t working

There are lots of things that might not go as planned during your time in the lab. You might be overcommitted and unable to meet your obligations, a project might stall for reasons outside the research team’s control, you might not get on with someone you work with, or the work might not turn out to be what you expect. While this can be uncomfortable, it’s also completely normal.

• Raise it early:
  • There is no need to suffer in silence and most problems are easier to solve earlier rather than later.
  • You don’t need to have a solution in mind, or even to be able to fully articulate the problem. If something doesn’t feel right about what’s going on that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to communicate.
• Explore options:
  • If you’ve taken on too much, we can usually adjust your workload to make sure that participating in the lab doesn’t impact your other commitments.
  • If the lab turns out not to be the right fit, or your plans change, then leaving is a completely legitimate choice and not a betrayal of anyone. Research is a bad thing to do reluctantly!
  • All we’d ask is that you let us know as early as you can, and hand your work over tidily (see below) so that nobody has to reconstruct what you were doing.
• Who to talk to:
  • For most things the easiest route is whoever you work with most closely: your research mentor, or whoever is leading your project.
  • You are also welcome to raise things with the PI, directly, if you are having an issue with someone else in the lab or they would be better placed to help.
• If the problem is the PI:
  • If the concern is about something the PI has done, said, or failed to do, and you feel comfortable raising it with Cameron directly, you should always feel free to do this. He would rather hear about it directly, and raising it will not affect how you are treated in the lab or what is written about you afterwards.
  • However, it is often difficult to do this in practice. If you have an issue that you don’t feel comfortable raising with the PI, there are several other ways to report issues. You are entitled to use any of them without telling Cameron first and without explaining your reasons.
  • Within the Psychology Department:
    • The Undergraduate Program Director (currently Dr. Hoi-Chung Leung, psy_ugpd@stonybrook.edu) is the appropriate first point of contact for concerns about an undergraduate research placement.
    • The Department Chair (currently Dr. Joanne Davila) is the next step if that isn’t the right route, or if it doesn’t resolve things. Contact details are on the department page linked above.
  • Outside the department:
    • The Ombuds Office (ombuds@stonybrook.edu, 631-632-9200, Psychology B Room 137) is independent, informal, and impartial. It is not an office of record, so speaking to them does not begin a formal process and does not commit you to anything. Conversations are confidential, with narrow exceptions where disclosure is required by law.
    • The Office of Equity and Access (reportit@stonybrook.edu, 631-632-6282) handles discrimination and discriminatory harassment. Reports can be submitted, including anonymously, through ReportIt.

Time commitments and end dates

• By semester:
  • You commit to one semester at a time, and your commitment matches the credits you registered for.
  • Towards the end of each semester we’ll talk about whether you plan to continue in the next semester and whether you want to increase or decrease your commitment.
• Breaks and summer:
  • You aren’t expected to do lab work over winter break, spring break, or the summer unless we’ve specifically arranged it.
  • If a study happens to be running over a break, we’ll agree in advance who is covering what, and it will be a smaller commitment than during term.
  • If you feel you’re being asked to work too much or at times that should be breaks, let someone know.
• Wrapping up:
  • Whenever you leave (at the end of a semester or when you graduate) we’ll schedule a handover to make sure someone who remains in the lab understands the work you’ve been doing well enough to continue it.
  • In practice that means ensuring that any code or data are accessible on the lab infrastructure, and documented in a way that someone else could understand.
  • In some cases RAs might continue to be involved in projects after they have officially completed their time here (for example, if they are an author on a manuscript that has been submitted to a journal and they want to see the manuscript through the review process). This kind of participation is entirely voluntary: there’s no expectation that you will contribute to projects after you finish unless you are excited to!
  • When your time with the lab finishes, we will revoke your access to lab infrastructure (like Slack, GitHub, and the lab server), and ask you to return any keys to physical spaces.
• Staying in touch:
  • We hope to stay in touch with you after you leave! Alumni are always welcome at lab meetings, talks, and events. Moreover, we would love to keep up to date with you and support you in your next steps so please do keep us in the loop.