{"id":2572,"date":"2019-05-10T09:34:33","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T09:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/the-evolution-of-my-lab-meetings-over-time\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T06:35:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T06:35:19","slug":"the-evolution-of-my-lab-meetings-over-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/the-evolution-of-my-lab-meetings-over-time","title":{"rendered":"The evolution of my lab meetings over time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being on sabbatical for the past 5 months has given me the incredible opportunity to take a step away from my typical teaching and administrative load. It has given me time to catch up on other projects that always seemed to be sidelined because of other priorities and responsibilities. In short, sabbatical has been a much-needed and rejuvenating break from my norm. Of course, this doesn\u2019t mean that everything in my world has been put on hold.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One very important aspect of my job that is immune to sabbatical is my roughly bi-weekly lab meetings. Typically this involves most of the members of my lab \u2013 undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and research assistants \u2013 coming together to provide updates on their projects, identifying challenges and opportunities, and planning next steps.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

However, after years of these meetings, I noticed last summer that they were becoming a bit stale. Given the variety of research programs that are represented by the members of our lab, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for me to notice subsets of the lab getting distracted by updates on a research project that didn\u2019t connect, in any obvious way, to their own. This isn\u2019t a comment on the people in the lab \u2013 it\u2019s just human nature. And given the number of meetings I have been in, where I wondered\u00a0\u201cwhat\u00a0does\u00a0this\u00a0have\u00a0to\u00a0do\u00a0with\u00a0me,\u201d<\/i> I fully understand any and all distractions.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Beginning last semester, I decided to try to spice things up a little. This involved turning the lab meetings from a meeting of updates to something I hope is far more meaningful to everyone involved.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This began with an activity that I borrowed from\u00a0Dr. Max Liboiron<\/a>. Specifically, we began by thinking about the goals of our research projects and the overarching goals of our lab. This particular reflection, in my opinion, was extremely important because it gave us a chance to see how each project might fit into the overarching vision of the lab, and in particular, how seemingly disparate projects might overlap.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We made a huge pile of who we are accountable to in our #science<\/a>. I was pleased to see so many lab members say we were accountable to fish and birds. Also: other lab members, scientific standard for ethics, Indigenous gov\u2019ts & peoples, & lab principles. 2\/3 pic.twitter.com\/VP0fGTFyhb<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Dr Max Liboiron (@MaxLiboiron) November 3, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n