Research Assistants

We are excited that you will be joining us as a research assistant this quarter! Below are some expectations that specifically apply to you as an RA.

The Day-to-day

• Show up to your meetings, show up to run your participants, show up to your classes, and show up to lab meetings.

• Keep the lab and all research spaces tidy. Put lab equipment back where you found it. Keep common areas uncluttered.

• Dress code is casual but not too casual. When interacting with participants or presenting your work, don’t wear pajamas and sweat pants – but jeans are totally fine.

• Be on time. Especially when you are running participants – in fact, show up 15-20 minutes early to set everything up. And be on time for your meetings: respect that others have packed days and everyone’s time is valuable.

• If you’re sick, stay home and take care of yourself. Because you need it, and also because others don’t need to get sick. If you’re sick or have an emergency, reschedule your meetings and participants for the day (or the next couple of days) as soon as you can. Be sure to let a graduate student or Dr. Weber know if you have to reschedule participants.

Logistics

• Most 199-RA's in the lab take 4 units of COMM credit. Some RA's do 2 units. If you are planning on registering for some other number of units (e.g. taking 5 units), please confirm with René or with one of the graduate students.

• The general communication department policy is that RA's should work on their respective assignments anywhere from 2-3 hours per week per unit of credit. For a 4-unit RA this should be 8-12 hours of work per week. For most RA's, the majority of time is spent working on data collection and data cleaning, but other projects do arise.

• If for some reason you are unable to maintain the workload required to earn the full amount of credit you have registered for, please get in touch with René and discuss available options.

Mini Projects

As a part of the lab experience, research assistants will each complete a mini-project aimed at advancing their understanding in a topic of interest and serving as a potential launchpad for future projects. These mini projects will allow research assistants to push their understanding in a given research topic or skill while helping them develop in their interests in view of future transition into graduate school or work in the industry. We leave RA's with a 10% to 20% buffer between actual worked hours and expected hours to allow time to work on these projects.

Summary:

The mini-project is an open-ended research or skill-development project. This means that the exact topic that you choose is completely up to you, so long as it fits within the broader research agenda of the Media Neuroscience Lab. As an example, your project could be any of the following:

• A 3-5 page APA Style literature review on a topic of your choice.

• An initial analysis of a dataset from the lab or from another repository

• A proposal for an experiment or other study

• A write-up of a collaboration with a graduate student in the lab

• A skill-development project (e.g. learning a coding language and demonstrating your skill by writing a script to do something cool).

• Two “science journalism” style write-ups of academic articles published in the last 6 months that you think are especially interesting or exciting.

Feel free to also propose something that is not on this list! This mini-project is designed to be open-ended, and to have a great deal of flexibility for RA’s to do something that is interesting to them and that develops their knowledge and skills in a meaningful way. RAs can also feel free to work with a partner on their project. If the project is by nature an individual one (e.g. developing skills in a coding language) each member of the group should show in a meaningful way their own contribution to the final project.

Grading

Mini projects are designed to benefit the research assistants completing the project while providing interesting future avenues for work in the Media Neuroscience Lab. They are also designed to be a safe place to try something new that may not work. For this reason, completion of all action steps of the mini project will result in full credit for the project.

Preparation for Graduate School

If you are an undergraduate in the lab considering going to graduate school in Communication, Psychology, or a related discipline, please let René or one of the graduate students know as early in your time with us as you can. In addition, you should be in regular communication with lab members about your professional goals. In order for use to provide you the strongest possible letter of recommendation, you'll need to work with the lab at least two quarters (preferably more) before asking for a recommendation letter. In addition, you should do your best to do all of the following:

• Complete an honors thesis during your final year at UCSB. For more information about the honors thesis process, click here.

• Present research at a professional conference in the field you’re applying to (e.g., National Communication Association, International Communication Association, Social and Affective Neuroscience Society).

• Prepare for the GRE/MCAT/LSAT exams as early as you can.

• Look for programs and professors who do research that interests you.

• Try to learn skills that go beyond running participants through research (e.g., writing an IRB proposal, creating study materials, planning a new experiment).

If you are planning on pursuing a career in research, you need to be hardworking, willing to fail (often), and deeply knowledgeable in the theories and methods used in your area of interest. This is typically what admissions committees in top graduate programs are looking for in an applicant.