Parent & Carer
Activities:
Panel discussion about combining family life and academia
We hold a panel/Q&A event on a (roughly) annual basis, in which different members of the department share their experiences of combining parenting and family life with academia, followed by an informal discussion. The idea is to try to reflect the broad range of experiences across different career stages, genders and personal circumstances, to show the many different ways in which people can balance these important aspects of their lives. These events are open to any interested staff members and PhD students, and have recently been organised via our dynamic ECR Forum. They have been well-attended and generated plenty of interesting discussion, as well as fostering a sense of a supportive environment in which colleagues feel free to be open and frank about their experiences and reflections.
10 Simple Rules for a Supportive Lab Environment
We know that moving from an early career researcher to a principal investigator (PI), or lab leader, can be challenging. One important, but often neglected aspect of this new role is the need to create a supportive lab environment in which your lab members at every level, as well as yourself, can thrive. Establishing this kind of environment stimulates the lab to produce the best science in the present but critically prepares young scientists for their own later positions of responsibilities, wherever they go, in a healthy and sustainable way. We argue the success of a lab is measured not by its illustrious journal publications but by the number of students who reach out to their PI 20 years later to share their own successes. We have collected 10 simple rules that guide the new PI in the development of their own positive and thriving lab atmosphere. Published as a multi-author collaboration in honour of Professor Mark Stokes, by his students and mentees, Mark set the example of a thriving, supportive lab. At York we encourage our PIs to consider and reflect on the supportive lab environments they foster and to share best practices amongst their teams and colleagues.
Champion Bio:
MaryAnn Noonan is a Lecturer in the Psychology Department at the University of York. She is interested in how we learn, make decisions and live within social environments. She mainly works with young people and adults to study how the brain changes over development and supports these functions. She teaches the advanced option "Cognitive Neuroscience of Adolescent Decision Making and Social Cognition". She is passionate about outreach and engagement. She read her undergraduate in Psychology at the University of York, before moving to the University of Oxford and then McGill University for post graduate studies and early career research and teaching positions. On the way she had two children who are simultaneously amazing and exhausting.
