3 Onboarding and offboarding

3.1 Onboarding

Congratulations for joining the lab! Now there are a number of steps you must take to actively participate in the lab.

Send Jeff a CV/resume. It doesn’t need to be thorough or up-to-date. It must be submitted to IACUC when adding you to the protocol, so it just needs to be something that we can upload.
Install Microsoft Teams on your phone and computer and log in via your UNL credentials. Turn on notifications for the #cchil channel straight away. Add your photo to your Teams profile.
Go to the IACUC training page to:
1. Complete online CITI IACUC General Regulation Training (GRT) (Working with the IACUC- Investigators, Staff, and Students- 1 Basic Course).
  - Send Jeff a PDF of the Completion Certificate when completed.
  - If you have already completed IACUC training at UNL, go to My Records and save a PDF of the Completion Certificate.
  - If you have previously completed IACUC CITI training through another (not UNL) institution, you should log into your existing account on the CITI website and click on “Add Affiliation.” This will allow CITI to link your completed courses across institutions and ensure that you do not repeat trainings unnecessarily.
2. Complete the OHS form.
  - For “campus mail address, supervisor, department, building or facility”, enter “B83 East Stadium, Jeffrey Stevens, Psychology, CB3”
  - On page 1 (Part A- Occupational and Environmental Risk Factors- Animal Contact), check “I have contact with animals in teaching or research through a university approved animal care and use protocol.”
  - Under Species and Type, check column 4 (Research/Teaching) for Dog
  - Page 3, Part A, Section II, “Hazards Associated with Animal Contact”, there is a list of agents with a column of check boxes. Answer “no” for all of them.
  - Submit the form electronically (do not send it to Jeff, as it has personal health information).
3. If you receive an email from the IACP folks about the General Regulation Training (GRT), Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) form, and the Facility Orientation, you can ignore it. This email goes out if I add you to the IACUC protocol before you complete the online version of the GRT or before you submit your OHS form. And there is no facility orientation for the dog lab.
Complete CITI IRB training for Social/Behavioral Research Investigators.
- Send Jeff a PDF of the Completion Certificate when completed.
- If you have already completed IRB training at UNL, go to My Records and save a PDF of the Completion Certificate.
- If you have previously completed IRB CITI training through another (not UNL) institution, you should log into your existing account on the CITI website and click on “Add Affiliation.” This will allow CITI to link your completed courses across institutions and ensure that you do not repeat trainings unnecessarily.
Send Jeff a photo and a short blurb about yourself for the CCHIL website. Please make sure that the photo can allow a square crop, and please write the blurb in third person rather than first person (check the website for examples).
Send Jeff your NUID number for lab keycard access. NOTE: If you are new to UNL and do not have your physical NCard yet, you will need to pick it up at the NCard office and activate it (instructions for activation come with the new card) before you can be given keycard access to buildings/rooms.
Read over this lab manual (at least chapters 1-4).
Read any IACUC protocols and IRB protocols associated with the projects you’ll be working on. Jeff will attach those to an email.

3.2 Training

Prior to joining the lab, you should complete CITI training for IRB and/or IACUC to learn the basic principles of conducting research on humans and/or other animals. Once you join the lab, training occurs to different extents and by different people depending on which project you are working on. Often a graduate student or lab technician will be involved in training undergraduate researchers. However, sometimes, an experienced undergraduate may train a new undergraduate researcher. Training is super important, and if you feel like you do not know what you should be doing, please ask questions and request help. We would rather you ask a ‘silly’ question (very few questions are silly) than not ask the question and make a mistake. If you feel you have not been properly trained, please contact Jeff.

3.3 Offboarding

While we’re sorry to see you go, leaving is an inevitable part of working in a research lab. We have a few requests when you leave the lab.

Please clean any areas you have been working in and return any equipment that you have been using. Any equipment and materials purchased by the lab are property of UNL and must be returned to the lab (this includes computer equipment such as laptops, monitors, external hard drives, etc.).
Please archive all lab materials appropriately. This is very important for data. Please ensure all data are archived on OneDrive or the appropriate data storage area. Ensure all data analysis scripts and documentation are archived to OneDrive and/or the appropriate Git repository. Please take the time to carefully document the experimental methods, data collection, and data analysis. If possible, please explain the documentation and materials to another lab member.
Note that any data collected, obtained, and/or generated in the course of a research project conducted at the University are property of the University of Nebraska. As such, they must be fully transferred to Jeff upon leaving the lab. See the University of Nebraska Research Data Policy for more information.
Please delete files or securely dispose of documentation of lab credentials (e.g., experimental computer passwords, Qualtrics passwords, social media account passwords).

If you have participated meaningfully to the lab and not violated any of the lab principles, we will move your name to the ‘former members’ section of the lab website. Note if you are in the lab less than a semester, we will not list you as a former member.

We will also deactivate your Teams account to reduce the number of active members. But we still want to hear from you, so please keep in touch via email and let us know how you are doing!