Instilling a Culture of Collaboration and Mindfulness around Core Instrumentation

Many shared resource facilities support instrumentation that is provided to end instrument operators in either a semi- or completely unsupervised manner. To effectively manage these resources, it’s important to build operational structures that instill trust between core members and instrument operators. Core directors and staff need to be able to tune messaging and training to connect with the different strata of their user base – day-to-day users, occasional customers that need updated training, primary investigators, and research administration. Core staff must also be able to put safety, policy, and engineering controls in place to ensure proper material and data handling, that troubleshooting is robust and instrument issues are dealt with quickly and fairly, and that the systems managed by the Core will generate validated and trustworthy results. In this town hall, we’ll discuss success stories and implementation strategies used by two shared resource facilities and share how they grow a culture of respectful communication between staff and instrument operators.

                               Speakers:  Marie Adams, Van Andel Institute
                                                  Michelle Itano, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill  (presentation)
                                                  Derek Jones, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (presentation)
                                                  Stephen Polter, University of Rochester Medical Center