Hey #neuroscience folks, for some reason my university thought it was a wise idea to be put me in charge as director of our neuroscience institute for a little while. Those of you working in the trenches at all levels (e.g. students, RAs, postdocs, faculty) I'd like to hear from you.
What are specific things that a department/institute can do to either inject more joy in the work or make the process of research easier?
Rob 🏳️🌈 RMiddleton.Art reshared this.
El Duvelle
in reply to Tim Verstynen • • •Congrats!!
Some quick suggestions, not really specific to neuroscience though, and I don't know if you have any budget to actually do stuff:
Other things that seem like good ideas but I haven't tried them yet:
- a mentor system (newcomers get a mentor from a different topic but a slightly higher hierarchical level)
- lab tutorials (someone learned a new lab technique, analysis method, reference manager: they propose a tutorial session and run it if enough people are interested, maybe they are paid or given some official title for this so they can put it in their C
... Show more...Congrats!!
Some quick suggestions, not really specific to neuroscience though, and I don't know if you have any budget to actually do stuff:
Other things that seem like good ideas but I haven't tried them yet:
#Academia
Tim Verstynen
in reply to El Duvelle • • •@elduvelle
Thanks! These are all great ideas. The institute is already doing some of these (e.g., shared journal clubs, institute Slack). But others we could start doing.
Appreciate it!
Moritz Negwer
in reply to Tim Verstynen • • •something I have seen working well in various groups:
- Establish a rule that the first few questions after a presentation have to be asked by young researchers before the PIs are allowed to speak. Works better than it should.
- Once someone comes back from a conference, give them space to present a couple highlights. We have a channel for this in Teams/Slack, and it's always heartwarming to see someone enthusiastically report their conference days. Presentations work well too.