Welcome!

The goal of this page is to help new members of the Sokol-Hessner Lab (SHLab) get set up quickly and easily.

The short version

Email Peter with…

1. Your google email address (used for Google-based resources, Slack).
2. Your DU email address (used for DU-specific resources).
3. Your GitHub account info (see below).
4. Your information for your website profile.
5. Your IRB training completion certificates (see below for more information).

He will then add you to…

• the lab Slack and email lists.
• the lab GitHub organization.
• the secure DU drives.
• the important lab Google documents and calendars.
• the website.
• the lab IRB protocol.

Finally, you need to get your stuff set up! Read on for more info about the above items and the rest of the setup.

Communication

The lab uses two main ways to communicate, plus a few others.

1. Slack

There are two Slack workspaces¹ to join. Peter will add you to both of them.

1. The SHLab Slack is for most daily communication. The workspace has channels organized around general communication, interesting “good reads” that lab members find, social interactions, research projects (each project has its own channel), direct messages between specific lab members, and more.
2. The DU PSYC Coders Slack is for people in or affiliated with the DU Psychology department who use programming to conduct their research. The workspace has channels for e.g., R, python, MATLAB, and more.

Slack Settings

Slack works best when everyone’s on it, and people are relatively responsive. To this end…

1. Join the lab Slack using a username that is based on your real name (i.e., your full name, your initials, or some combination thereof).
2. If you are an active member of the lab, please install the Slack application and then enable notifications in Slack on your computer and any digital devices (i.e., phone) that you regularly use.
3. Once installed, please configure your account with a representative photo of yourself, your full name, your pronouns, a brief blurb about yourself & your lab role, and any other information in the Slack profile that’d be helpful.
4. Join Slack channels related to your work and role in the lab, and participate!

2. Email

We have two lab email lists: shlab-general@du.edu and shlab-core@du.edu. To be added to these lists, please send your name@du.edu email to Peter.

These lists are used for forwarding email announcements, and occasionally for lab events. shlab-general is meant for anyone & everyone within the department of psychology who is interested in things that the S-H Lab may be discussing or doing. shlab-core is meant only for ‘core’ members of the lab (graduate students, undergraduate RAs, etc).

3. Other communication

We have weekly lab meetings during the academic quarter². All active lab members are expected to come to lab meetings and occasionally present/lead lab meeting. Lab meetings are typically scheduled immediately prior to each quarter (taking into account members’ schedules). The goal is that lab meetings are helpful! Think about things you’d like feedback on, deadlines that’d be useful to you (to help you accomplish something on time, whether that be in your research, classes, or something else), and can be formal or informal presentations, guided discussions, or ‘journal clubs’ in which we present and discuss recent exciting research on emotion and decision-making.

Lab members are also generally on Bluesky and X. You are encouraged to join Bluesky and follow other lab members to facilitate the sharing of interesting or relevant info about science, research, job opportunities, resources, or anything else. Twitter is your call (the place is not always the healthiest). Peter’s Bluesky is @p1sh and the lab’s is @shlab. Peter’s Twitter is @p1sh, and the lab’s is @ItsTheSHLab. Joining Bluesky/X isn’t required, just recommended.

Files and Documents

1. Code

The lab uses GitHub for all project- and lab-related scripts, functions, etc. We use it to facilitate collaboration, documentation, backup, and storage. We believe this is a tool that every psychological scientist can benefit from learning to use, and require all lab members who are working on or producing code to use GitHub. The lab’s page on GitHub is here.

If you don’t know how to use GitHub, we recommend beginning at Start Your Lab (created by lab alumnus Ari Dyckovsky!), specifically the Docs page. Read and complete the steps listed in the Setup and Tutorial pages. You may also find the information on the Text Editors and Glossary pages helpful.

Along the way, you’ll need to…

• Create a GitHub account.
• Join the SHLab’s GitHub organization (by sharing the GitHub username or email you used to set up your account with Peter).
• Download and set up GitHub Desktop and a text editor (we recommend VS Code).

If you have questions about how to use GitHub, ask! We were all new users not so long ago, and would love to help you get set up.

Once you’re all set up, look through some of the repositories³ on the lab’s GitHub page to see how we use GitHub (though if you have ideas for how to do so better, please share! We’re all looking to improve).

2. Data Files

While GitHub is for scripts, functions, documentation, etc (and communication around those), the lab’s data should not be put on GitHub. Instead please use the University of Denver’s shared secure drive space for all data. There are two drives - the “S” drive and the “R” drive. Please email Peter with your name@du.edu address to be added to those drives. Peter will send you the file sharing addresses for those drives and help you connect to them.

These drives also have some non-GitHub based resources (PDFs of helpful textbooks, etc.).

In order to access the drives from off-campus, you must have the latest & greatest version of the DU VPN installed. See here for more.

3. Google Calendars and Files

The lab uses Google Calendars for all lab-wide events (e.g., lab meetings, important dates) and to coordinate use of the lab’s experiment rooms. We also occasionally shares files (including docs or spreadsheets) using Google. Share your Google account username (i.e. accountname@gmail.com) with Peter so he can give you access to the relevant files.

4. Website

The lab website contains brief profiles of all lab members. Please send the following to Peter:

• Your name and pronouns exactly as you would like them to appear on the site.
• A grayscale profile picture of yourself. Higher resolution is better.
• A brief professional bio written in the 3rd person describing your role in the lab and research interests. If you are an undergraduate, your bio should be around 50 words (plus or minus), and you should also mention your major(s) and minor(s) and potentially your career goals. If you are a graduate student, your bio should be around 100 words (plus or minus) and you should also mention any relevant prior affiliations or roles. See other peoples’ bios for suggestions and ideas.
• (optional) Any links you want included (your email address, website, or profiles on GitHub, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).
• (optional) A PDF copy of your curriculum vitae (CV).

Peter will then put your profile on the website. If anything changes about your profile info, ask Peter to update the relevant portion of your profile - it’s your responsibility to keep it up to date!

Lab Tools

We use programming tools for a lot of our work. Install at least the following, in addition to Slack and GitHub Desktop:

• R. R is free. We suggest using RStudio (Desktop edition). See here to download and install.
• Python. …coming soon…

We used to use the following tools, but almost never do at this point:

• MATLAB (optional). DU has a site license. See here to download and install.
• PsychToolBox (optional). PTB is a free add-on to MATLAB, used to control the screen and interact with input/output devices (e.g., keyboard, mouse, eye tracker). See here to download & install once MATLAB is all set up.

You may want to consider other tools too, the Adobe Creative Suite (DU site license; e.g., Illustrator, Photoshop; see here), Office 365 (DU site license; see here), Zotero (free & paid versions; used for PDF management, annotation, and citation management in Word and/or Google Docs; see here) and more.

Lab Space

The lab is located in Room 155 of Frontier Hall (2155 S. Race St.), on the University of Denver campus. Experiment rooms are immediately adjacent to lab.

• If you are a graduate student, you should have your own set of keys. Contact the department administrators to obtain keys.
• If you are an undergraduate student, you will use the shared keys kept in a lockbox near the lab. Ask Peter for the location and code for the lockbox.

The SHLab’s Research

To familiarize yourself with the kind of research we do and how we do it, you can read published, in press, and pre-print papers from the lab on the website. Follow your interests and ask the lab members you’re working with (Peter, a graduate student, etc) which they recommend for you.

Many of our datasets are also available on the Open Science Framework (OSF; Peter’s OSF profile).

Mentorship

Mentorship is critical to a scientist’s success! We’re big believers in professional development and mentorship (e.g., see PIPS, ASFP), and value opportunities to practice mentorship and get better at it.

The lab’s philosophy is that mentorship is best thought of as an ongoing conversation. We try to structure portions of that conversation to ensure that lab members experience a consistent, thorough, supportive environment. That said, a good mentoring relationship is a relationship - it’s best when both parties are working at it. That means we encourage lab members to take responsibility over their mentoring relationships!

With this perspective in mind, we treat ‘mentor contracts’ as documents that facilitate conversations about expectations and goals. Here are two example contracts: for PhD students, for undergraduate RAs. These are living documents that require updates and are open to revision or addition. If you want to change the text or add text for your mentor contract, have that conversation with your mentor! We encourage lab members to consider using mentor contracts in all significant mentorship relationships (not just with Peter).

All lab members should also do the following:

• At the start of the academic year, meet with your mentor(s) to discuss the mentorship contract, your year-on-year progress, your career goals and concerns, and anything else you’d like to cover.
• At the start of every term, have a goals meeting with your mentor(s). Discuss your goals at multiple levels, especially at the level of the term. What will you aim to accomplish in the next 10 weeks and how?
• Set up weekly meetings for general check-ins and/or for project-specific updates, discussion, and planning.

Human Subjects Training

Last but certainly not least, when working with people (including data from people) in a scientific context, you are required to complete the Institutional Review Board (IRB) training. Thus before conducting studies or even analyzing data in the lab, you must be IRB-certified. The DU IRB uses the CITI Program to administer, certify, and track researchers’ training. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to http://www.citiprogram.org and create an account if you don’t already have one.
2. Then, following the DU IRB’s training instructions, link your account to the University of Denver and specify your role and the kind of research you do (Social Behavioral Educational Research, abbreviated SBER).
3. Complete the following courses:
   • Social Behavioral Educational Research Investigators - Basic Course.
   • RCR for Social, Behavioral, Educational, and Humanities (RCR is short for Responsible Conduct of Research).
   • Research Conflict of Interest.
   • … and any others required by the DU IRB.
4. Save PDFs of your ‘completion reports’, and send to Peter.

Completing your CITI certification shouldn’t take more than two (2) hours, and once completed, you won’t have to revisit it for a few years - just get it done!

If you have questions during the process, don’t hesitate to ask! After you’ve completed everything, Peter will add you to the lab’s IRB protocol, thereby certifying you to interact with human participants and their data.

That’s it!

We hope this was helpful. Note that this website is hosted via GitHub, making it easy for existing lab members to edit and improve upon this document! Please offer suggestions and edits to improve this page via GitHub! If you’re new, don’t worry about that yet - just follow the instructions above to get started in the lab.

Welcome! We’re excited you’re here, and look forward to doing science with you!

Footnotes

1. A workspace is a collection of people and topics in Slack. Typically, a workspace is for an organization (like a lab). Workspaces contain multiple channels. ↩

2. The University of Denver is on an quarter system. Each quarter is 10 weeks. ↩

3. Repositories are for all the files related to one project. See the Start Your Lab glossary for more. ↩