How do you deal with the lab members who rarely replied your emails but wanted you to reply theirs?

[wasabigirl]

Hello everyone,

I am now a second year graduate student in my psychology lab. In my lab, we have 3 undergraduate students, 3 graduates students, including me. 

My professors asked me to mentor 2 of the undergraduate students. I sent a few useful reference book for research and statistics to them, but they never really replied my emails (not even a thank you email). They only replied my email if I hold a meeting with them (which I coached them with some research skills face to face before the school lock-down). 

About a few weeks ago, I have collected all my interviews and I needed to transcribed the audio-taping. My professor told me that the undergraduate students should help with my work. I sent them an email to ask them to work with me. They told me that they are doing their reports and would wait later. Later , I sent another follow up email. Up til now, it has been 3 weeks that I sent my last email, and they still haven't replied my email. 

Do you think I should bring this up to my supervisor? I don't feel comfortable working them these two undergraduate students anymore due to lack of respect. But I also don't want to create a fuss over it. I would like to find other undergraduate volunteers to help me, but not sure if that will jeopardize the relationship with the original 2 students. 

Also, I feel our lab really lack of cooperation in general. We kind of do our own things. I am even thinking about volunteer in another lab now to have a more collaborative lab experience. Thank you so much for your suggestions! 

[Sigaba]

16 minutes ago, wasabigirl said:

Hello everyone,

I am now a second year graduate student in my psychology lab. In my lab, we have 3 undergraduate students, 3 graduates students, including me. 

My professors asked me to mentor 2 of the undergraduate students. I sent a few useful reference book for research and statistics to them, but they never really replied my emails (not even a thank you email). They only replied my email if I hold a meeting with them (which I coached them with some research skills face to face before the school lock-down). 

About a few weeks ago, I have collected all my interviews and I needed to transcribed the audio-taping. My professor told me that the undergraduate students should help with my work. I sent them an email to ask them to work with me. They told me that they are doing their reports and would wait later. Later , I sent another follow up email. Up til now, it has been 3 weeks that I sent my last email, and they still haven't replied my email. 

Do you think I should bring this up to my supervisor? I don't feel comfortable working them these two undergraduate students anymore due to lack of respect. But I also don't want to create a fuss over it. I would like to find other undergraduate volunteers to help me, but not sure if that will jeopardize the relationship with the original 2 students. 

Also, I feel our lab really lack of cooperation in general. We kind of do our own things. I am even thinking about volunteer in another lab now to have a more collaborative lab experience. Thank you so much for your suggestions! 

@wasabigirl

Welcome to the Gradcafe

There's a lot of moving pieces to your situation. A first glance, it seems like the professor did not make a best effort to put everyone in a position to succeed.

Did anyone sit the undergraduates down and explain objectives, roles, responsibilities, and expectations or were people put in a position to figure things out?

Are you the students' mentor or are you their supervisor? Do they have the same understanding of the relationship as you?

[wasabigirl]

1 minute ago, Sigaba said:

@wasabigirl

Welcome to the Gradcafe

There's a lot of moving pieces to your situation. A first glance, it seems like the professor did not make a best effort to put everyone in a position to succeed.

Did anyone sit the undergraduates down and explain objectives, roles, responsibilities, and expectations or were people put in a position to figure things out?

Are you the students' mentor or are you their supervisor? Do they have the same understanding of the relationship as you?

Thank you for your message. 

It's just mentoring. Giving advice and discuss together around every 2 to 3 weeks. We don't really have any guideline for our collaboration. If you see my another post today (in psychology forum if you search my posts), I also mentioned that our lab environment is not collaborative at all. People do their own things. Supervisor is friendly but does not help much for students in their research unfortunately.  I am fine with not much research since my goal is to be a registered clinical psychologist, so practice is more important than research, but I feel missing a lot of things in graduate school. 

[Sigaba]

10 minutes ago, wasabigirl said:

Thank you for your message. 

It's just mentoring. Giving advice and discuss together around every 2 to 3 weeks. We don't really have any guideline for our collaboration. If you see my another post today (in psychology forum if you search my posts), I also mentioned that our lab environment is not collaborative at all. People do their own things. Supervisor is friendly but does not help much for students in their research unfortunately.  I am fine with not much research since my goal is to be a registered clinical psychologist, so practice is more important than research, but I feel missing a lot of things in graduate school. 

IME, mentoring requires a certain level of rapport that is built over time. It may well be that you and the undergraduates not on the same page. (You might be not living up to their expectations while they're not living up to yours.) The disconnect is intensified by the "do  your own thing" sensibility.

My recommendation is that you consider contacting them individually and having a conversation about getting the project back on track and make task completion the focus of your efforts. If opportunities arise to provide additional support, I suggest that you be very selective until that time the rapport is stronger.

[Modulus]

In my current role, I serve as a mentor and direct supervisor for our laboratory's undergraduate research assistants. 

Undergraduate students--even the most industrious, bright, and well-intentioned--do not have the same degree of experience in the academic and professional world as graduate students and faculty. At this stage, they likely need a great deal of scaffolding in addition to clear expectations, and progress monitoring. 

My advice would be to first set up a meeting with your supervisor to discuss this problem and clarify your own role. Mentorship is typically a two-way street, in which a mentee actively seeks advice and guidance and the mentor provides it in return. If this is intended to be your role, it may be that they students are unsure of how to engage in a mentor-mentee relationship and @Sigaba's advice to meet with them one-on-one could be helpful. If they still do not seem interested, that might be teh time to bring this up and open opportunities for other students in the lab.

However, if your role is intended to be supervisory, you will need to create structured expectations. Are the students receiving course credit for their involvement in the lab? Are they seeking recommendation letters? Provide examples of the work that will achieve these desired outcomes and support the students in their efforts to move toward these goals. It may be difficult to restructure this as the students seem to have received little or no feedback regarding expected communication frequency, but it can help to be a bit honest with them--say that you are sorry that you were not clearer before about your expectations and show understanding of how the current situation was one reached by miscommunication--but also firm about what everyone's roles are going forward.

 

[wasabigirl]

On 4/23/2020 at 9:01 PM, Sigaba said:

IME, mentoring requires a certain level of rapport that is built over time. It may well be that you and the undergraduates not on the same page. (You might be not living up to their expectations while they're not living up to yours.) The disconnect is intensified by the "do  your own thing" sensibility.

My recommendation is that you consider contacting them individually and having a conversation about getting the project back on track and make task completion the focus of your efforts. If opportunities arise to provide additional support, I suggest that you be very selective until that time the rapport is stronger.

Thank you so much! It think that's a good idea! 

[wasabigirl]

On 4/24/2020 at 11:46 AM, Modulus said:

In my current role, I serve as a mentor and direct supervisor for our laboratory's undergraduate research assistants. 

Undergraduate students--even the most industrious, bright, and well-intentioned--do not have the same degree of experience in the academic and professional world as graduate students and faculty. At this stage, they likely need a great deal of scaffolding in addition to clear expectations, and progress monitoring. 

My advice would be to first set up a meeting with your supervisor to discuss this problem and clarify your own role. Mentorship is typically a two-way street, in which a mentee actively seeks advice and guidance and the mentor provides it in return. If this is intended to be your role, it may be that they students are unsure of how to engage in a mentor-mentee relationship and @Sigaba's advice to meet with them one-on-one could be helpful. If they still do not seem interested, that might be teh time to bring this up and open opportunities for other students in the lab.

However, if your role is intended to be supervisory, you will need to create structured expectations. Are the students receiving course credit for their involvement in the lab? Are they seeking recommendation letters? Provide examples of the work that will achieve these desired outcomes and support the students in their efforts to move toward these goals. It may be difficult to restructure this as the students seem to have received little or no feedback regarding expected communication frequency, but it can help to be a bit honest with them--say that you are sorry that you were not clearer before about your expectations and show understanding of how the current situation was one reached by miscommunication--but also firm about what everyone's roles are going forward.

 

It's a mentorship, so I am not in the supervisory role. 

I guess they might need a recommendation letter from our lab since they want to apply for graduate school.

Thanks a lot for your advice. I think it's good to communicate the expectation. I feel they do not respect my efforts that I coach them at all. Maybe I should also discuss with my supervisor about having other undergrad students to help with my project.

[Inspired]

Thanks for the useful information.