Guide for new team members

My PhD thesis has lots of mistakes, but provides a good background in ice sheet modeling. It is available here. I also recommend the lecture notes of Hilmar Gudmundsson available here.

If you have no experience working in a linux environment, I highly recommend this tutorials: https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/. I recommend the following sections:

• Course overview + the shell
• Editors (Vim)

Cultivating a safe group culture

Enjoyable, high-quality research can only be conducted when you feel safe, secure, and supported. All group member are thus dedicated to a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, and/or religion. We do not tolerate harassment by and/or of members of our group in any form.

In addition to making group members feel safe and secure, diversity and inclusivity has numerous benefits to us all. Put simply, the greater the mix of people in our group, the greater the mix of skills, experiences, perspectives, and ideas we can collectively draw on. But the benefits of diversity and equality cannot be fully achieved without creating an inclusive environment.

To report an issue, please contact Mathieu; all communication will be treated as confidential. Please be advised that as a university employee, Mathieu is a mandated reporter, and must forward your complaints to the Title IX office if they indicate that sexual harassment or assault has taken place. If you do not feel comfortable contacting Mathieu directly, please feel free to contact a member of the Dartmouth Title IX office.

Mental Health

There is increasing evidence that certain attributes of PhD research may challenge your mental health. Specific factors driving this include:

• Low pay and quality-of-life issues, particularly as a function of living in the upper valley
• Feelings of isolation in your research
• Uncertainty in your research, although it should be noted that, in research of all kinds, it is not just the outcomes that are uncertain, but the questions themselves! 
• Uncertainty in your post-PhD career
• So-called “negative results”; i.e. at some point in your research it is likely that certain questions will be more challenging to answer than anticipated, or that you will feel you have spent days/months/years toiling with little to show
• Burnout; i.e. feeling the need to work endless hours to make up for the above issues, and the subsequent exhaustion

All PhD students come across most of these issues at some level. I strongly encourage everyone in the group to take an active and pre-emptive approach towards the maintenance of their mental health. I assure you that you have the time and resources needed for a highly successful PhD. If there is anything that is placing undue stress, or preventing you from performing at your potential, please do not hesitate to let me know. Every effort will be made to help you access the right support networks.

Group Identity vs Individual Contribution

The purpose of having the “named” Ice Future Group is two-fold: (1) to support each other, (2) to promote our group to newcomers and potential newcomers. While collaborations among group members and with other research groups is highly encouraged, the purpose of the group is not to “brand” the ideas as group ideas, or Mathieu’s ideas. Your project is yours to make your own. You should not feel as though you are presenting Mathieu’s ideas or the group’s projects. For your career and for the development of the science, it is important for you to feel ownership of the project that you are working on. It is good to talk about “we” when it is us working together on developing the project, but you should take credit for ideas that you come up with in the course of your research (That being said, you should always acknowledge project funders when presenting or writing a paper).

Outputs and open science

Authorship on any manuscript or presentation will be openly discussed in group meetings and should, if possible, include everyone who has made a significantcontribution to the work. A “significant contribution” can include but is not limited to, code development, interpretations of primary data, and development of ideas presented in the work. The order of authors on a manuscript or presentation should be dictated by the relative contribution made by each author; in the case these contributions are equal, authors should be listed alphabetically by family name. Where conflict arises, Mathieu will facilitate discussion to help resolve this. I encourage an open dialogue about this matter, ideally via authorship ‘check-ins’ that will likely occur several times over the lifetime of the study. To help inform Editors, reviewers, and readers of our papers, we will include an author contribution statement as part of a paper when necessary.

Your active research product (code, documents, etc.) should be backup up regularly using an off-site, ‘cloud’-based storage system. All Dartmouth staff have access to a nearly-unlimited dropbox and Google Drive allocation (seer rclone above).

All code written as a part of publicly-funded research and used to produce results or make plots in a published paper should be made publicly available using GitHub, ISSM’s repository, or other public code repository. If you feel that there is a good reason for keeping your code exclusive, this should be discussed with Mathieu.

Working hours

I recognise that many of you have personal responsibilities and obligations in addition to your PhD studies. I appreciate that, at times, it can be difficult to balance those demands, and that a classic ‘9-to-5’ day may not be optimal. Because of this, the exact hours you choose to work is up to you. In particular, due to non-work responsibilities and health risks that may be associated with in-person activities, there is no expectation of working on campus or participating in activities if a member feels that these are potential a risk to their personal health. Being “online” (whether virtually or on campus) from 11 AM and 4 PM most days may, however, help facilitate collaborative working and, we hope, lead to a more fulfilling research experience. Where possible, group meetings and events will not be arranged outside these hours to allow participation by all ICG members.

Holidays

You are expected to take (at least) two weeks of time off per year, beyond normal institute holidays (e.g. federal holidays, fall/spring/winter breaks). I strongly encourage you take this time so you can relax, visit family and friends, and generally unwind from the rigours of PhD study. Although not a formal requirement, it is helpful to inform Mathieu in advance when you plan to take holidays or if you will not be present at our group meetings. 

Work on weekends is sometimes OK and/or necessary (especially before deadlines), but will likely lead to a drag on your overall productivity if it is a regular occurence. If you feel that you are having difficulty maintaining a healthy work-life balance, please talk to Mathieu.

Meetings

Group meetings: all “ice future” group members are expected to attend our weekly group meeting if they are not otherwise engaged in other research-related activities (e.g. at conference, attending training or a lecture, etc). Group meetings provide a forum for:

• Research updates
• New and interesting papers
• Old and important papers
• Papers from other fields
• Practice conference talks
• Manuscript in prep figures/outlines
• Fellowship applications/proposals
• Essays/articles on being a good scientist, inclusion, creativity, science writing, etc.

The group meeting should be a forum for open discussion, not a venue for one-on-one discussions about very technical research details (that is what one-on-one meetings are for). Mathieu will recommend tabling a discussion if it is derailing the group.

All “ice future” group members are expected to attend our bi-weekly reading group (organized with Helene Seroussi and Colin Meyer’s group) and the ice+climate seminars. Let me know if you are also interested in participating in the weekly ISSM teleconference.

Individual meetings: These will occur either weekly or on an ad-hoc basis as personal situations require. These will give you an opportunity to discuss your progress and any administrative issues that you need addressed. You are encouraged to come fully prepared for individual meetings with questions or issues that you would like help with, or ideas for further work; in this way, discussions can be focused such that all concerns are addressed. Ideally, in a one-on-one meeting, we should discuss: (i) what were your plans from last meeting; (ii) work undertaken; (iii) issues arising; and (iv) a forward plan until the next meeting. Such reports are an important way to self-monitor your progress, as well as keeping your supervisor(s) informed of both positive and negative developments. 

If you are having trouble meeting deadlines that we have previously agreed upon, please do not work yourself an unhealthy amount to attempt to meet those deadlines. Please talk to Mathieu about why you are having trouble meeting the deadline, and we will discuss how you can potentially work more efficiently or set more reasonable deadlines.

The purpose of these meetings is not for you to only report on what went right. Often the most pressing issue is a roadblock in the research or a failure. This is not a bad thing! I am here to help you get through those roadblocks or find an alternate route to achieve your ultimate goal. Ideally, feedback should be a roughly proportional mix of recognizing successes and analyzing failures.

Please inform Mathieu of holidays or notable absences in advance. Permission for holiday is very rarely required, but please respect key deadlines within the calendar year and the fact we work in a research group. It is important to take holiday, respect weekends (or time in lieu) and establish a sustainable work-life balance. It is also important to respect the time and efforts of others, and the contribution of funders, and to note that effective working will improve the quality of your research. Where there are key time pressures, it is important to prioritize work.

Individual Development Plans

An individual development plan (IDP) is a worksheet that identifies your current strengths, and those which you would like to develop over the next few years. Group members will fill one out early in working with Mathieu and revise it on a yearly basis. The document is simply a way to pause, be thoughtful about your goals, and communicate those goals to Mathieu in a way that he can follow up on.

Communication

Please give consideration to the timing of the email with respect to what the recipient needs to do; for example, try not to send an email at after 5pm for something that is required for a 10am meeting the next day. Different people work or respond to emails at different times of the day or weekend, and as stated earlier in this documents, those hours will not be prescribed. That being said, no group members are required nor should feel obliged to reply to email/slack messages outside of their typical work hours. However, prompt replies to emails, within work hours, is helpful. 

Journals

You should be familiar with recently published material relevant to your PhD project. Below are some academic journals that may be of interest:

• Geophysical Research Letters
• Journal of Geophysical Research – Earth Surface
• The Cryosphere
• Journal of Glaciology
• Nature Geoscience, Nature communications
• Nature
• Science
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Signing-up to ‘mail alerts’ from specific journals and more general publication ‘feeds’ (e.g. Google Scholar or Web of Science) are highly recommended; by doing this, you can be kept informed of newly published literature related to your studies.

Conferences

Conferences and workshops are, by far, the best way to meet other researchers (important for developing collaborations in the long run), disseminate your research in a timely fashion and learn about what others are doing. For US-based researchers in glaciology, there are a few conferences, some regular and others less so that are valuable venues for making connections and presenting your work.

• AGU Fall Meeting – annual (mid-December)- THE huge meeting for Earth scientists in the US, 20k+attendees, but always lots of good cryosphere content
• EGU General Assembly – annual (April/May) typically in Vienna – smaller European version of AGU (still 10k+ though), good way to meet European cryo community, which is larger than American community 
• West Antarctic Ice Sheet Workshop – annual (Sep/Oct) – small workshop (<100 attendees), mostly US participants, great way for researchers starting out to meet big names in field and program managers from funding agencies
• International Glaciological Society Symposia – typically 2-3 per year – topics vary greatly, but always focused on ice topics, usually one symposium per year is more general (i.e. ice and climate change), usually anywhere from 50-400 attendees depending on topic
• AGU Ocean Sciences – even years (early spring) – AGU meeting focused on ocean topics, typically some ice/ocean sessions, still big – 5k+ attendees
• SIAM/APS Meetings – applied math and physics meetings, typically large, but a good venue to talk about more technical/mathematical aspects of your work to people outside of glaciology

Web presence

As soon as you have our first paper out, make sure to:

• Create an account on ORCID 
• Create your “Google Scholar” page (using your personal email so that you don’t lose it).

Thanks, and please enjoy your time in the “ice future” group!

These Guidelines borrow heavily and are modified from the ice and Climate group vision from Alex Robel, and the Basin Research Group Code of Conduct, assembled by Chris Jackson (basinsresearchgroup.com).