Our research group follows a simple model for interactions among the group members and with others. We expect all group members to,
This document explains what these two points mean. There is also an Appendix on Group Admissions and an Acknowledgements section. Please note that this is a documentation of our vision for group culture and goals, and is not a legal document, which supplements, but does not replace, School- and/or College-level policies for your level of employment or study.
We value the participation of every member and want to ensure everyone has an enjoyable and fulfilling experience, both professionally and personally. Accordingly, all members of the group are expected to show respect and courtesy to others at all times. We create our culture and our culture is inclusive.
Enjoyable, high-quality research can only be conducted when you feel safe, secure, and supported. All group members are thus dedicated to a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, and/or religion. We do not tolerate harassment by and/or of members of our group in any form.
Speaking with each other is as familiar as any group interaction can be. Yet it is often a point of subtle friction that can at least annoy or at worst exclude.
- Be mindful of talking over others when discussing in groups, and be willing to hear out the ideas of others. Talking over others is disruptive and leads to unproductive meetings, but also it makes the person who is being talked over feel like their ideas are invalid or not worth being considered. To facilitate discussion and ensure that everyone is heard:
- Wait for others to pause, or finish their train of thought before you being speaking or gesticulating, etc. -Please be sure to pause long enough between thoughts or explicitly invite others to respond when speaking so that others feel welcome to contribute to the discussion
A non-exhaustive list
- Harassment and sexist, racist, and/or exclusionary jokes are never appropriate. Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of discussions, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.
- Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate at any time.
- Do not insult or put down other group members
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. The PI will discuss these guidelines with group members who violate these rules, no matter how much they contribute to the group, or how specialised or needed their skill set. If inappropriate behaviour persists after this initial discussion, formal processes, in line with University policies, will commence. To report an issue, please contact the PI; all communication will be treated as confidential.
Please be advised that as a university employee, the PI is a mandated reporter, and must forward your complaints to the Title IX office if they indicate that sexual harassment or assault has taken place. If you do not feel comfortable reporting directly, please feel free to contact a member of the Title IX office.
Our group does not exist in a vacuum, but is within and affected by the structures, rules and customs of broader systems, including academia, our scientific community, and our society. The unfortunate reality is that these systems have been and continue to be discriminatory, racist and sexist institutions, which perpetuate harmful actions towards black, indigenous, and people of color, in addition to women and LGBTQ+ people. It is because of this discrimination that these groups have been, and continue to be underrepresented in the research community.
In addition to making group members feel safe and secure, diversity and inclusivity has numerous benefits to us all. Put simply, the greater the mix of people in our group, the greater the mix of skills, experiences, perspectives, and ideas we can collectively draw on. But the benefits of diversity and equality cannot be fully achieved without creating an inclusive environment.
The goal of this research group is to be an inclusive and safe place in which to do the best science and promote the happiness and career development of its members. However, cultivating such a group culture is not enough if it still exists within a system that is not equitable, diverse, and inclusive. As such, our group strives to promote anti-discriminatory and anti-racist values within our broader campus and scientific communities. We do so in our words, but also in our actions, by:
- Fighting bias in our group admissions practices
- We seek out new ways to communicate our scientific research to underrepresented groups.
- We pay or award credit to group members equitably within each career stage.
- We actively support the efforts of underrepresented scholars outside of the group by seeking a diverse and balanced pool of seminar speakers, conference presenters and co-conveners, research collaborators, and award nominees. Our goal is to have speakers nominated for seminars be representative of the US population.
- We use gender- and race-neutral language in recommendation letters and trainee evaluations (link).
- Recognizing that areas of potential research interest in the Arctic and high North (and where we live in Seattle) are colonized Indigenous land, and using original Indigenous place names (e.g. for Greenlandic glaciers: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1449148) and land acknowledgements in published or presented work.
- We hold those in power (including the PI and those in our own institution) and each other accountable by calling out racist, sexist, or otherwise hurtful language and actions. We support each other in this accountability. Conflicts within our own group should be adjudicated in private and with the PI's assistance (or if preferred, through the University Ombud).
- We incorporate discussions of anti-racism and anti-discrimination efforts in the geosciences into our group discussion at least once a semester.
- We discuss further ways in which we can add to the above actions in our group efforts.
- Remaining accountable to ourselves by reviewing our efforts in these directions each year, naming ways in which we have failed to live up to our own standards, and outlining steps to make changes in the coming year.
There is increasing evidence that certain attributes of PhD research may challenge your mental health. Specific factors driving this include:
- Low pay and quality-of-life issues,
- Feelings of isolation in your research; e.g. everyone has their own topic and it can often feel as if you are working on your own
- Uncertainty in your research, although it should be noted that, in research of all kinds, it is not just the outcomes that are uncertain, but the questions themselves!
- Uncertainty in your post-PhD career
- So-called “negative results”; i.e. at some point in your research it is likely that certain questions will be more challenging to answer than anticipated, or that you will feel you have spent days/months/years toiling with little to show
- Burnout; i.e. feeling the need to work endless hours to make up for the above issues, and the subsequent exhaustion
All PhD students come across most of these issues at some level. I strongly encourage everyone in the group to take an active and pre-emptive approach towards the maintenance of their mental health. I assure you that you have the time and resources needed for a highly successful PhD. If there is anything that is placing undue stress, or preventing you from performing at your potential, please do not hesitate to let me or any of the postgraduate tutors in the department know how we can help. You should also be familiar resources on campus. Every effort will be made to help you access the right support networks.
There are two guiding principles for doing good work in our group:
- All work must be carried out with the highest ethical standards.
- All work should be carried out towards achieving well-defined goals (even if these goals change and change often).
All group members are held to the highest standards of academic integrity. These standards are well described by the university: [link] (https://www.washington.edu/cssc/facultystaff/academic-misconduct/).
All research from this research group that is published will be published in open access journals. There is no flexibility in this policy. Preference is given to Diamond, then Gold, and then Green Open Access. Preference is also given to journals that are community-based rather than commercial.
The group authorship policy is that everybody who contribute to a project is listed as an author. A contribution is something that, if one were to print out the paper for example, you could physically put your finger on. A few additional points:
- It is imperative to discuss authorship early and often so that there are no surprises.
- The order of authors on a manuscript or presentation should be dictated by the relative contribution made by each author; in the case these contributions are equal, authors should be listed alphabetically by surname.
- Where conflict arises, the PI will facilitate discussion to help resolve this.
- To help inform Editors, reviewers, and readers of our papers, we will include author contribution statements as part of all papers.
We code a lot in this group and all codes should be under version control. Repositories may be private prior to publication but must be public afterwards (or sooner, but this is a preferrence). Notebooks should be provided to facilitate reproducibility.
We must adhere to any mandates imposed by those who fund our work. Our research is funded by a combination of state, federal, endowment, and philanthropic contributions, and it is important to know the exact mandates of each.
Licenses should be discussed with co-authors before codes are published. We generally support the use of open, MIT-style licenses, although discussion on this topic is welcome.
The purpose of the group is not to “brand” the ideas as group ideas, or the PI's ideas. Your project is yours to make your own. You should not feel as though you are presenting the PI's ideas or the group's projects. For your career and for the development of the science, it is important for you to feel ownership of the project that you are working on. It is good to talk about "we" when it is us working together on developing the project, but you should take credit for ideas that you come up with in the course of your research.
Questions such as "how much should I work?" or "what is expected of a PhD student?" are virtually impossible to answer without a specific idea of one's goals. For that reason, all of the following points will vary quite a bit between group members. Some basic points:
- A good rule of thumb is that grad students should write one paper first-author per year after their qualifying exam (so a typical 5-yr PhD would result in three peer-reviewed, first-author papers).
- For postdocs the average should be two first-author papers per year.
- If you definitely are not pursuing an academic career, these numbers are probably too high and other things are probably more important (i.e., code development, outreach, non technical writing, etc).
- Even for those pursuing an academic career, these numbers may vary widely, for example, it is difficult to compare a detailed project that results in a single long-format publication with two short projects that result in two short-format papers. For these reasons, these numbers are just meant to illustrate typical pathways rather than any one person's course of study.
- Science takes time. As a starting point, graduate students and postdocs should expect to work about 40 hours per week. If you can achieve your goals in less time, that's great. If you're really excited about a project and want to work more, that's great too.
- It's equally important to take time to cultivate a variety of sources of contentment in one's life. Academic burnout is a real problem. While working excessive hours may achieve short term success, it is less likely to be sustainable over one's entire career.
- The exact hours you choose to work is up to you.
- Being on physically present on campus between 9 AM and 5 PM most days will facilitate collaborative working and, we hope, lead to a more fulfilling research experience.
- Holidays. You are expected to take (at least) two weeks of time off per year, beyond normal institute holidays (e.g. federal holidays, fall/spring/winter breaks). I strongly encourage you take this time so you can relax, visit family and friends, and generally unwind from the rigours of PhD study. Although not a formal requirement, it is helpful to inform the PI in advance when you plan to take holidays or if you will not be present at group meetings.
- Weekends. Work on weekends is sometimes OK and/or necessary, but will likely lead to a drag on your overall productivity if it is a regular occurence. If you feel that you are having difficulty maintaining a healthy work-life balance, please talk to the PI.
If you struggle with establishing a sustainable work life balance, please discuss this with the PI at an early stage.
Group meetings. All group members are expected to attend the weekly group meeting if they are not otherwise engaged in other research-related activities (e.g. at conference, attending training or a lecture, etc). The group meeting is an excellent forum for updating colleagues on project progress, developing research skills, and widening our collective understanding. Group meetings provide a forum for research updates, New and interesting papers, Old and important papers, Papers from other fields, Practice conference talks, Manuscript in prep figures/outlines, Fellowship applications/proposals, Essays/articles on being a good scientist, inclusion, creativity, science writing, etc.
As part of your professional training, you will be expected to lead a group discussion on a topic of your choice at least once per term (though in practice you should present more frequently than this). The group meeting should be a forum for open discussion, not a venue for one-on-one discussions about very technical research details (that is what one-on-one meetings are for!). The PI will recommend tabling a discussion if it is derailing the group.
Individual meetings. These will occur as personal situations require. These will give you an opportunity to discuss your progress and any administrative issues that you need addressed. You are encouraged to come fully prepared for individual meetings with questions or issues that you would like help with, or ideas for further work; in this way, discussions can be focused such that all concerns are addressed. Ideally, in a one-on-one meeting, we should discuss:
- What were your plans from last meeting;
- work undertaken;
- issues arising; and
- a forward plan until the next meeting.
Such a structure offers an important way to self-monitor your progress, as well as keeping your supervisor informed of both positive and negative developments. The purpose of these meetings is not for you to only report on what went right. Often the most pressing issue is a roadblock in the research or a failure. This is not a bad thing! The PI is here to help you get through those roadblocks or find an alternate route to achieve your ultimate goal. Ideally, feedback should be a roughly proportional mix of recognizing successes and analyzing failures.
If you are having trouble meetings deadlines that we have previously agreed upon, please do not work an unhealthy amount to attempt to meet those deadlines. Please talk to the PI about why you are having trouble meeting the deadline, and we will discuss how you can potentially work more efficiently or set more reasonable deadlines.
Part of being a supportive group is getting to know each other as people in addition to colleagues. To facilitate this, the group will strive to have regular activities that don’t necessarily revolve around research. These include: weekly lunches, quarterly dinners (at the PI's house, but maybe elsewhere too), fun outdoorsy activities, and other outings.
An individual development plan is a worksheet that identifies your current strengths, and those which you would like to develop over the next semester or few years. Group members will fill one out early in working with the PI and then periodically revise it on an ad-hoc basis. The document is simply a way to pause, be thoughtful about your goals, and communicate those goals to the PI in a way that can be built upon.
Please give consideration to the timing of the email with respect to what the recipient needs to do; for example, try not to send an email at after 5pm for something that is required for a 10am meeting the next day. Different people work or respond to emails at different times of the day or weekend, and as stated earlier in this documents, those hours will not be prescribed. That being said, no group members are required nor should feel obliged to reply to email outside of their typical work hours. However, prompt replies to emails, within work hours, is helpful.
"The literature" is academic jargon that means "everything written about some topic". You should be familiar with recently published material relevant to your project. You should familiarize yourself with tools, such as Google Scholar, that help you navigate the literature.
Conferences and workshops are by far the best way to meet other researchers. This is important for developing collaborations, disseminating your research in a timely fashion, and learning about what others are doing. Given the diverse nature of our group's work, there are many conferences that might be worth your time. The AGU, EGU, SIAM, and APS meetings are the largest attendance. Smaller meetings like the WAIS workshop or medium sized ones like SCEC or SSA are also useful. Students in the group should expect to go to one big and one small conference each year.
First of all, there are a number of excellent resources available regarding applying to graduate school in the Earth Sciences.
- The Graduate School Application Station
- Tips and Tricks for Applying to Graduate School in the Geosciences, Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, Western Washington University
- Unwritten rules about applying to graduate school, Matthew D. Hurteau, University of New Mexico
- Actively recruiting group members (at all career stages) from historically underrepresented groups, and fostering a supportive community so that our group is a desirable and welcoming environment (see rest of guidelines). Our goal is for the group (including undergraduate and graduate students) to be representative of the US population averaged over time scales of 5-10 years (to mitigate small number biases), and to review our efforts and shortcomings in this regard each year in the fall prior to the PhD application cycle.
- To facilitate recruitment, we maintain active efforts to work with the many world-class minority-serving institutions in the Seattle region, and the Southeast more broadly. We begin these recruitment efforts through an annual commitment to recruit and mentor at least one BIPOC student through the EAS REU program, and when possible, through interested GT undergraduate students.
- Pursue strategies to combat the doubly-unrepresentative nature of mathematical, computational and dynamical glaciology, including maintaining a diverse range of entry points for potential projects and providing mentoring (ourselves or through institute resources) to group members in approaches and techniques that we consider integral to our research.
- Why do you want to go to grad school?
- Why are you interested in the geophysics and compuation group?
- What is your technical training? Do you enjoy coding? Do you enjoy doing math?
- What is your communication training? Do you enjoy writing? What's the hardest part about writing?
- What do you expect from an advisor?
- What role do you expect your advisor to play in your career trajectory?
- What are you primary and backup career goals?
- Do you have any questions for me?
This document was copied from a Google Document linked from Alex Robel's webiste link. This document originally provided the following copyright notice which has not been modified. The CC-BY 4.0 license requires that changes to the original document (in this case, Alex's) be noted. The interested reader will find these changes documented through the git repository's version control system.
These Guidelines borrow heavily and are modified from the Basin Research Group Code of Conduct, assembled by Chris Jackson (basinsresearchgroup.com). They have also been edited and added to by Alex Robel, Samantha Buzzard, Paige Copenhaver, Ziad Rashed, and Hudson Moss.
This CoC is released as CC-BY 4.0