General Policies
Hours
The lab can be considered “open” from 9a - 5p on weekdays, except in the case of university holidays as listed on the UCF Academic Calendar. All lab members are welcome in the main lab office during these normal business hours.
Lab staff (lab managers, etc.) are expected to keep normal business hours for the most part. Graduate students and postdocs have more flexibility. When active during semesters, undergraduate research assistants are expected to coordinate with the lab manager(s), graduate students, and postdocs to determine a weekly schedule at a minimum of 10 hours per week, to encourage lab interaction and to be sure the lab is adequately staffed for the day-to-day.
We encourage all lab members to be mindful of safety if staying in the lab past business hours. Especially for students, it is often tempting to stay late to continue working. We have no policy against this. UCF is a very safe campus, but at night it can be quiet and dark. Please be aware of the availability of the following resources on campus, should you ever need them:
PI office hours
In addition to poking my head into the lab regularly, I will be in my office with the door open for at least an hour every day that I’m on campus (most days). Feel free to interrupt me during that time. Because I am easily distracted, I ask that if my door is closed, send me a message or try me later rather than knock.
Dr. Lighthall also has 30-minute ad-hoc meetings that take place right after lab meetings. This is a space where any lab member can talk to her regarding project ideas, request professional advice, or voice concerns.
Meetings
Weekly lab meetings
We will alternate between having a biweekly lab meeting and a biweekly journal club. Lab meetings will be focused on project presentations, practice talks and going over new data or methods. Lab meetings will last no longer than 1 hour. If at the end of 1 hour, we need more time to discuss something, we will either take a break before continuing or schedule another meeting. Lab meeting agendas and notes will be shared via weekly lab meeting reminder emails by the lab manager. All full-time lab members are expected to attend the weekly lab meeting. All part-time lab members (including undergraduates) are welcome to attend but attendance is not required.
Journal Club
The journal club will be focused on discussing new and/or important research articles. All undergraduates are expected to sign up for at least one journal club each semester. Journal club sign up lists will be set in the Google Drive document for Lab Meetings Schedule. Undergraduates will also be expected to select an article to discuss during the journal club. Articles can either be selected from the Journal Club meetings folder on the Google Drive, or a student can select another article of their choosing, as long as it’s relevant, no older than 2 years and is a peer-reviewed journal.
Individual meetings
At the beginning of each semester, I will set a schedule to meet with each full-time lab member for one hour a week. If we do not have anything to discuss in a given week, that’s fine; we can just say hi or cancel it.
Deadlines
If you need something from the lab director or staff by a particular deadline, please inform us as soon as you are aware of the deadline so that we can allocate the time as efficiently as possible. We expect at least one week’s notice, but greatly prefer two weeks’ notice. We will require two weeks’ notice for letters of recommendation. If you do not adhere to these guidelines, we may not be able to meet your deadline. Please note that this applies to reading/commenting on abstracts, papers, and manuscripts, in addition to filling out paperwork, etc.
Presentations
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[to-add]: link to resources
I encourage you to seek out opportunities to present your research to the department, research community, or general public. If you are going to give a presentation (including posters and talks), please be prepared to give a practice presentation to the lab at least one week ahead of time. Not only will this help you feel comfortable with the presentation, it will give you time to implement any feedback. I care about practice presentations because a) presenting your work is a huge part of being successful in science and it’s important that you practice those skills as often as possible, and b) you are going to be representing not only yourself but also the rest of the lab.
There is a lab template for posters that you are free to modify as you see fit, but the header and general aesthetic should stay similar. If you have ideas for how to improve the poster template, please show the lab so we can decide whether to implement them as a group. This will help increase the visibility of our lab at conferences. (Don’t believe me? Check out the various lab “walls” at the next conference you attend.) There is no template for talks, and I encourage you to use your own style of presentation as long as it is polished and clear.
Lab travel
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The lab will typically pay for full-time lab members to present their work at major conferences (e.g., SFN, CNS, CEMS). In general, the work should be “new” in that it has not been presented previously, and it should be appropriate for the conference. When I set our grant budgets, I estimate $1500 per trip, so your reimbursable costs should be around that amount or less. Meal costs will be reimbursed for people who are presenting work from the lab. The lab will also pay for new grad students and postdocs to attend one conference in their first year in lab. If travel expenses are being paid off of a grant, additional restrictions may apply (talk to me). All of these guidelines, of course, depend on the availability of funds.
Recommendation letters
Letters of recommendation are one of the many benefits of working in a research lab. I will write a letter for any student or lab member who has spent at least one year in the lab. Letters will be provided for shorter-term lab members in exceptional circumstances (e.g., new graduate students or postdocs applying for fellowships). I maintain this policy because I do not think that I can adequately evaluate someone who has been around for less than a year. To ensure that I have enough time to complete your letter of recommendation in accordance to your application deadline, I ask for a minimum of two weeks notice before the letter is due.
To request a letter of recommendation, please adhere to the deadline requirements described above. Send me your current CV, statement of purpose, and any relevant instructions for the contents of the letter, including information for the program that you are applying for or other application materials. If you are applying for a grant, send me your specific aims or a short summary of the grant. In some but not all cases, I may ask you to draft a letter, which I will then revise to be consistent with my evaluation. This will ensure that I do not miss any details about your work that you think are relevant to the position you’re applying for, and it will also help me complete the letter in a timely fashion.
| School | Program/Field | Degree | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Central Florida | Human Factors & Cognitive Psychology | PhD | 12/01/19 |
| University of Southern California | Psychology | PhD | 12/01/19 |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | Psychology | PhD | 12/15/19 |
| Wright State University | Human Factors | PhD | 01/04/20 |
Data Organization
Almost all of our data is stored on a secure UCF server, the “Research Drive”. You should have full access to this drive once the lab managers have completed your orientation and onboarding procedures, and it should appear as the R:/ drive on any of the lab’s IT-managed computers.
Data sharing
Not only is data-sharing the right thing to do, we are actually required to do so for any dataset that was funded by the NIH. We will make these datasets publicly available within a year of publishing the first paper from the dataset. You should also be prepared to share any scripts that you used in your published processing & analysis pipeline. Currently, the best option for sharing smaller datasets seems to be the Open Science Framework, the best option for sharing MRI datasets is OpenFMRI, and I don’t yet know what is the best option for sharing EEG datasets.
Money management
For some of our studies we will pay our subjects for their participation, and we must always maintain good records of the inflow and outflow of that money. Cash should be stored for each study separately, securely in locked boxes or cabinets, with a well-maintained log of the subjects who were paid, when, and how much. We should never mix the cash for any two studies and the logs must always be considered isolated “accounts”.
If you are leading a study for which you are paying participants, you are primarily responsible for this record-keeping. Keep an eye on the amount of cash your study has on hand, with respect to the number of participants you have upcoming. Make sure you do not get into a situation where you are out of money and will not have enough to pay an upcoming participant, or worse yet, a participant who is participating today.
Assure that when the participants finish their sessions, they sign a receipt provided by Prapti for that study to confirm the amount, and that the time, date, amount, etc., is logged on your petty cash record. Make copies (preferably digital) of each receipt in case anything happens to the original. When your study needs more cash, make sure you have all of these logs together with your original copies of the participant receipts before you contact Shannon. Set up an appointment time with her and keep it, bringing all of these documents so she can square up her records with ours.