Mentorship philosophy
I love mentoring! My mentorship strategy follows these ten central tenets:
- My goal is to facilitate every trainee to reach their career goals, regardless of what they may be. We will work to build broadly applicable skills for any career.
- Mistakes are expected. The best education often happens from a failed experiment.
- Everyone works at their own pace. Don’t judge your full game by others’ highlight reels.
- I have no work hour expectations, nor do I expect a certain number of completed experiments per week. I want you to work when you feel you are most productive. Science is a team sport so maintaining good routines when others are available to assist will help foster success.
- Weekly mentoring meetings (at a minimum) to discuss data, experiment planning, career goals and development, grant writing and manuscript preparation.
- Scientific integrity is paramount. I expect all experiments and analyses to be well documented in a timely fashion. There will be no data manipulation to achieve a desired result. We only strive for added knowledge regardless of its fitting into a narrative we have already constructed.
- Everyone treats each other with equity and respect. I love humor, but I will not tolerate racist, sexist or bigoted comments of any type.
- Communication is essential. I will promptly reply to emails, and I expect you to do the same. Similarly, I encourage scientific dissemination and will always support your presentation at national and international conferences where applicable.
- Science is hard, and some self troubleshooting is critical. My expectation is first you try to reason out the error/issue. Second, look it up on the internet. Third, we are all here for each other, so do not toil away in silent frustration; ask me or other lab-mates.
- Most importantly, take time for yourself. Have fun in lab and outside of lab!
Diversity and inclusion
We want the lab environment to be a welcoming and encouraging place for all people.
Lab pets
Fun!
Updates
Intestine may harbor EBI pathogens in febrile infants yielding new surveillance and prevention insights (Links to an external site)
Infants with extra intestinal infections have gut microbiome signatures which may differentiate them from other term infants with fever, but without bacterial infection.
Welcome, Julia Trost! (Links to an external site)
The Schwartz lab welcomes Julia Trost to the team as a undergraduate researcher!