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Mentoring in the Chen Lab — What to Expect

Chen Lab

Mentoring in the Chen Lab

Goals: We are looking to grow our lab by recruiting enthusiastic and driven scientists whose research interests align with ours! If you are interested in: cancer, metabolism, cell signaling, immunology, and mechanisms of cancer metastasis, check out our “Current Projects” page to see if any of our work appeals to you, or visit our “Recent Publications” page for more details!

What you can expect: Broadly speaking, rotation students, students in medical school, undergraduate students, and early-stage graduate students will receive significant mentoring and project guidance, while late-stage graduate students and postdocs will be expected to operate more independently. Regardless of the level at which you join us, Dr. Chen will work with you to develop your scientific and career skills and to help place you in your next position when you leave the lab.

What to Expect as a Prospective Graduate Student

The mentorship guidelines outlined below are taken from a mentor-mentee compact used by the Hasty lab here at Vanderbilt, which was in turn modeled after one originally written by Professor Trina McMahon from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We have received permission to use this compact.

Expectations we will have of you:

  • Research Skills:
    • Experimentation: Vanderbilt is an amazing place, full of opportunities for you to learn new research skills. Some of these will be from your labmates in our own lab, but many will be from collaborators, students in other labs, core lab personnel, etc.  Please take advantage of these opportunities.
    • Presentations:  Challenge yourself by finding opportunities beyond what I or the department require of you.  The more often you present your work, the easier it will become and the better you will be.
    • Literature: Keep up with the current literature.  Be sure to carve out a few hours every week to search PubMed or read through the primary journals in our field.
    • Lab notebooks: Maintain a detailed lab notebook that is indexed in the front.  You should be writing something in it each day – even if it just says that you were working on a presentation or preparing for class.  You should be writing your experimental details as you go, and you should save time at the end of EVERY day to write in your lab notebook.
    • Training others: Mentoring and training other students (undergrads, rotating, summer) is a valuable experience for you.  Please embrace the opportunity should it arise.
  • Taking Ownership of your Education:
    • YOU have the primary responsibility for the successful completion of your degree. You should maintain a high level of professionalism, self-motivation, engagement, scientific curiosity, and ethical standards.
    • Ensure that you meet with Dr. Chen regularly. These meetings should include updates on your successful experiments, mistakes or experiments you’re still trouble-shooting, and ideas for new experiments.
    • Be knowledgeable about the policies of the graduate program you join. (ie: Cancer Biology)
    • Actively cultivate your professional development. The BRET office provides numerous resources to you. Please take advantage of them.

    You represent the Chen Lab – all of us – when you are on the Vanderbilt campus or at national conferences.  Please behave in a professional way.

  • Being Part of our Team:
    • Attend and actively participate in all group meetings. This does not just mean presenting your work when it is your turn. It also means providing support and insight into your labmates projects and refraining from using your phone during our meetings or in conferences.
    • Strive to be the very best lab citizen. We have a lot of common equipment and supplies and they all have their place. Please wash things you have dirtied, return things where you found them, and update the order list if we are running low on a supply. Please be respectful of your labmates. Respect their individual differences in values, personalities, and work styles.
    • Be a good collaborator. Engage in collaboration within and beyond our group. Treat everyone you meet with respect: PIs, animal care workers, students, research assistants, postdocs, cafeteria workers, etc.
    • Acknowledge the effort of collaborators. In your slide presentations and as we write papers together, it is imperative that we acknowledge the individuals who have helped us along the way.
  • Navigating your Relationship with your Mentor:
    • Be responsive to advice and constructive criticism: Chen will do her best to guide you, encourage you, and push you.  This may sometimes feel like criticism and be uncomfortable.  It is never her intent to hurt your feelings, but rather to help you grow and mature as a scientist.
    • Be on time: Timeliness is very important to Dr. Chen.  Please be on time to individual meetings with Dr. Chen, to our lab meetings, to seminars, etc.
    • Be mindful of others’ time: Chen will do her best to get your written materials back to you in a timely manner.  However, you must do your part to get drafts to her in a way that gives her enough time to get them back to you.  We will need many iterations on important documents such as your research proposal, grants, and manuscript.  Be prepared to start months in advance of deadlines.
    • If you are feeling overwhelmed or need help, please don’t hesitate to ask.
    • If there is something about Dr. Chen’s mentoring style that is difficult for you, please let her know! A mentor and mentee both need to flex and adapt to one another, and she wants to do her part to make your relationship the best it can be.
    • If you need time off for sick or personal reasons, please just ask. Chen (and everyone in the Chen Lab) understands.  In general, research assistants work 40 hours/wk, and students and post-docs should expect to work more than that.  Some of this work can be at home, reading and writing.  Vanderbilt’s policy is that students and postdocs can have 2 weeks (10 work days) of vacation.  In the Chen lab, we strongly believe that work-life balance is critical to your happiness and well-being, and that this will translate into a higher degree of productivity in the lab.

Expectations you can have of Dr. Chen as a Mentor:

  • Chen will work tirelessly for the good of the lab. The success of every member of her group is her top priority – this means you!
  • Chen will be available for regular meetings and informal conversations. If her door is open, you are welcome to pop in to ask a question, propose an idea, show her a result, etc.
  • Chen will help you with graduate-related work. She will come to all of your committee meetings, presentations, etc.
  • Chen will communicate with you openly about authorship and will do her best to provide you collaborative opportunities within and outside her lab so that your Biosketch will be strong when you leave her group.
  • Chen will teach you to communicate. While your primary goal is to complete the research required of you for your degree, communicating these data in an organized, comprehensive, and understandable way is equally important.  She will teach you how to write and how to give a good presentation.
  • Chen will encourage you to attend national conferences.
  • Chen will strive to be supportive, equitable, accessible, encouraging, and respectful of you. She recognizes that we all come from different backgrounds and walks of life and have different goals.  She will not treat everyone in the lab identically, but she will strive to be fair.  She views my role as fostering your independence, confidence, critical thinking, and creativity.
  • Chen will be your advocate. If you are having trouble with another person in the lab or outside the lab, she will work with you to resolve the conflict.
  • Chen is your mentor for life! Even after you leave her lab, she will still be your biggest cheerleader.  She will do whatever she can to help you in your career including providing honest letters of evaluation, finishing projects you were working on so you can have additional authored papers, and providing the best advice she can to you whenever you ask.
  • Chen will lead by example. She will be transparent with you regarding the joys and difficulties associated with her job.

Yearly Evaluation of Mentoring Relationship: Once every year, you will sit down with Dr. Chen and discuss your past and current goals, the progress you feel you’ve made, and your level of contentment with your relationship to the lab as a student.