This program is for first year students in basic and biomedical science PhD programs at UCSF.

Overview

In this workshop you will lay the groundwork for your thesis lab choice by self-assessing your PhD goals and characteristics of environments in which you have felt engaged. You will receive multiple tools for evaluating your rotation labs and you’ll get started using them in the workshop. You’ll have time for individual reflection as well-structured opportunities to work with your fellow first-years to identify important but hard-to-spot scenarios that may have occurred in your rotations. You’ll also hear from a student leader about their experience with some common challenges of choosing a thesis lab.   

Attend this workshop if you’re looking for structure and community around this important mentorship decision!  

This program will be helpful to you regardless of the number of rotations you have completed or how close you are to making your thesis lab choice.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Describe what you are looking for in a thesis lab
• Organize your thoughts about your rotations so far 
• Evaluate your rotation labs according to your goals
• Identify important scenarios to look out for in your rotations  

Format

This workshop will take place on Zoom. Optional follow-up office hours will be held in-person at Mission Bay the following day.  

All participants: You will be guided through a self-assessment using a shared Google Sheet where each participant will have space to write and reflect.   

Optional: Participants are invited but not required to participate in breakout rooms, unmute to speak, and/or write comments in the chat. Participants who opt out of breakout rooms will be given an alternate reflection activity.   

Optional Pre-Work: Take a look at our Conducting Successful Lab Rotations page and bring your questions!

Speaker

Ray Care, PhD - Program Director, Office of Career and Professional Development and UCSF PhD alumna
 

Materials

Beyond the workshop we’ve got lots of other ways to support you in choosing your thesis lab! The resources below can guide you through the process, and you can also always come talk to us in a career counseling appointment. 

If you haven’t checked it out yet, start by looking through the Conducting Successful Lab Rotations page. Whether it’s before, during, or after your rotation, this page has concrete tips for getting what you need, sample questions you can ask, and videos describing what to look for during your rotation. Especially if you’re going into your first rotation or if a rotation didn’t go how you hoped it would, we suggest reading through the “before” and “during” sections to develop your approach for making the rotation a success.

The processes for finding rotation labs and choosing your thesis lab have a lot of overlap. That means the steps you take to find good rotation labs contribute to your choosing a thesis lab process too. The resources below can help you at any point in this iterative process:

Start by self-assessing your goals for your PhD. You’ll consider what your goals are in different aspects of your PhD, and then determine what you need to achieve those goals. This information will guide you as you find rotation labs and eventually choose your thesis lab. 

• During the workshop you’ll do this self-assessment anonymously on a collaborative google sheet, so you can see what your peers are thinking about too! 
• Beyond the workshop, you can do the self-assessment with a PDF with examples drawn from previous students. 

Then consider the options available to you, i.e. your rotation labs. 

• Use the Decision Matrix for Lab Rotations to score your rotation labs on the criteria that are important to you. 
• Not sure you’re considering enough factors? Use our “21 questions to get to know your rotation lab” checklist to better understand the lab you are considering. 

Looking for guidance from another perspective? The articles and podcasts below are from faculty and senior students. We highly recommend them! 
How to Be a Graduate Advisee paper by Indira Raman 
How to Pick a Graduate Advisor paper by Ben Barres 
Double Shelix podcast "Next Level Mentorship"

This program is part of the Workplace Navigation (formerly Manage Up) series.

This event is part of National Mentoring Month at UCSF. We welcome the UCSF community to “Be a mentor. Find a mentor.” by attending mentoring events, participating in MentorQuest 2024, accessing mentoring related resources, and joining UCSFConnect.