A research assistant appointment should have many of the qualities of
a professional position, including both its responsibilities and
privileges. The Computational Nuclear Engineering Research Group
[CNERG] should be a collegial environment for the sharing of research
ideas and accomplishments. This can only be achieved by everyone
working under the same expectations in the pursuit of the same goals.
These guidelines define a professional standard of conduct intended to
ensure this common direction in the activities of the research group.
Research Progress
You are expected to make steady progress towards your research goals
at all times. Part of that process includes being active in setting
short and medium term goals including milestone dates and
deliverables. During the academic semester, performing well in your
courses is certainly important, but should not cause a complete lack
of productivity. This is your primary responsibility as a research
assistant and the following guidelines are intended to support this
responsibility.
Literature Review
An important part of being a successful researcher is understanding
the work that has already been done in your field and finding a place
for your research in that body of research. Learning to use the
literature review tools to locate relevant articles and then reading
those articles will not only provide you with valuable research
skills, but will also guide your research to ensure it can be an
original contributions. Finally, reading other people's published
work will lead to improved writing skills. A goal of reading one
publication per month is a good minimum standard.
Publications
Journal publications are the most important way to share your
knowledge and creativity with the rest of the scientific community.
Students pursuing a Masters degree will be expected to author or make
major contributions to at least one journal paper submission.
Students pursuing a doctoral degree will be expected to author at
least two journal papers submissions.
Conference Submissions and Travel
You are encouraged to submit your work to technical conferences and
will receive reasonable support to travel to at least one conference
per year. Travel to ANS National meetings will be organized in
conjunction with the UW-ANS Student Section. Support for travel to
other professional technical meetings can be arranged as
necessary. Travel to ANS Student conferences will generally not be
supported.
Professional Development
There are many individual skills and tools that are used to be a
successful and efficient computational scientist. In most cases, the
time investment to learn a new skill is quickly rewarded by an
improvement in the quality or efficiency of your research. You are
encouraged to use your research time to pursue new skills,
computational or otherwise, that will support your research progress.
Meeting attendance
In order to make productive contributions to the group you are
required to attend and actively participate in all CNERG meetings.
These meetings are an important opportunity for all CNERG members to
learn about and identify new connections to other members' research.
Furthermore, by being an active participant in the research group, you
can share your experience and expertise to improve the quality of all
the projects being pursued by the group.
Seminars
The Engineering Physics department conducts a regular seminar series
with a wide range of topics from all the research areas of the
department. These seminars are generally scheduled on Tuesday
afternoons at 4 PM and you should receive notification from the
department office. All graduate students in the EP department are
expected to attend these seminars. While it may be tempting to
dismiss some topics as unrelated to your work, this is an opportunity
to learn about a wide variety of interesting research. More
importantly, it is common to find connections to your own work, even
if they are weak connections, and in so doing you will develop a
deeper understanding of the work you are pursuing.
Office Hours
Choosing when you will spend time in the office as a professional is a
matter of finding a balance between your personal work habits and
being available to your advisor and colleagues for impromptu meetings
and consultations. Please establish some regular work-day hours when
you can generally be found in your office.
Vacation
Your research assistant appointment does not include any formal
vacation, sick, holiday or other leave. That said, you are permitted
to take a reasonable amount of time for all of these purposes.
Approximately two weeks of vacation per year is considered reasonable.
As a professional, you should consider how much additional vacation
time will interrupt your ability to make progress with your research.
Quarterly Review
A private meeting at the beginning and end of each academic semester
will provide an opportunity to review your research progress and
performance as a researcher under the guidelines described here. This
will also provide you a time to provide feedback to me on my role as
an advisor.
|