Week 3 – Our Lab in Relation to Others

The structure of the labs in Gottwald is very independent of one another. It feels more like an apartment complex, housing different tenants than a factory of workers trying to obtain a common goal, which makes sense considering each professor’s goals are individual of one another. All teamwork between individuals’ labs is completely voluntary and while there are labs who work with one another there doesn’t seem to be much of an effort for collaboration. While discussing the overall structure and workflow of the science departments, there seems to be not much of a push for publication compared to R1 universities and as such, there is less supervision and oversight over individual professors. The most important decisions, such as what to do with funding or curriculum formation, are centralized with professors putting in input and the department heads coming together to decide how the money should be allocated. Other than the largest decisions, all other decisions seem to be decentralized mirroring the same laissez-faire leadership style that exists with our own lab. There is an understanding that everyone in the organization is a professional and is working towards their publications. While this leadership style may work for the type of work that is being done, individual research, one of the main drawbacks is the lack of fellowship that exists between the members. Other than my research professor, I only know two other physics professors (those being from previous classes I took). I don’t know any of the other physics students completing research. My professor tried to alleviate the problem by having a weekly HQ day, but attendance has been sparse, only consisting of our lab and one other lab. I think more efforts should be taken in for cross-lab interactions.