FriSem Objective and Ethos

Mission

Friday Seminar (FriSem) is a professional training seminar for the Cognitive and Neuroscience areas of the Psychology department. FriSem has the following aims:

  1. FriSem should be a comfortable space where trainees can present their original scientific material with the purpose of practicing:

    • Developing clear scientific presentations
    • Thinking on one’s feet and efficiently managing and addressing audience questions
    • Refining one’s work to be defensible to a strong scientific audience
    • Developing resilience to common & normal anxiety of speaking in front of the scientific community

  2. FriSem should be a place where trainees learn to interact with science and respectfully engage with other scientists and their work. This includes asking relevant scientific questions, thinking critically about presentations that do not directly pertain to one’s own work, engaging with the community, and supporting one another’s scientific development.

  3. FriSem should be a place where community members can get feedback on work in progress.

  4. FriSem should be a place where community members can learn about and discuss relevant topics in their field.

Speakers and programming

Because FriSem is mainly intended as a training seminar for members of the Stanford Psychology community, we aim for the majority of weeks to have trainee presentations (students, postdocs, etc.). We encourage professors to volunteer to host educational sessions, in which they share how they think about topics in cognitive neuroscience, give a tutorial, or talk about non-research/professional-development-related topics (e.g., how to run a lab or put together a job talk). Other programming might include alumni panels (both industry and academia) and focused community discussions on relevant topics.

To that end, assuming that FriSem is held 8-9 weeks each quarter, we hope to maintain a standard of having 7-8 student presentations, 1-2 faculty presentations, 0-1 external speakers/other sessions each term. We encourage trainees in the department to aim for at least one presentation per year. Please reach out to the organizers to schedule a presentation date. We also hope that professors will encourage their trainees to share their work in this forum.

Interacting with speakers

  • FriSem is a training seminar. Presentations should be as low-stress as possible, and audience members should interact with speakers in recognition of this principle.
  • Make an active effort to phrase feedback, comments, and questions in a constructive and educational way. It is important to have constructive, educational aims in any interaction with the speaker. To foster growth mindset and reinforce the necessity for constructiveness in the training seminar, the organizers will help audience members reframe any points in ways that are constructive. If it seems like an exchange is not serving a constructive purpose, the organizers will deliberately attempt to steer the conversation back to being a constructive one.
  • When asking questions, consider that in addition to the speaker, the audience is mostly comprised of trainees for whom you should aim to be a role model in scientific communication and discourse.
  • Participation can come in many forms. Questions are one form; however, notes and following up with speakers can be just as – if not more – effective, and therefore are also encouraged.
  • Should problems arise, we encourage you to reach out to an organizer or fill out an anonymous feedback form. A key role of the organizers is to create an environment where people treat one another with respect.

Attendance

A training seminar is only as productive and welcoming as the people who choose to make it so. To that end,

  • Student attendance is expected and is a crucial part of your education.
  • Faculty attendance is also expected; participation in the training of students is an essential part of the responsibility of faculty members.
  • We understand that we are all busy and might not be able to make FriSem every week. That is ok. But please do not blow off FriSem because you are tired at the end of the week and want to go home at 3:15.

We understand that we are all busy and might not be able to make FriSem every week, but please limit absences to unavoidable conflicts and cases of emergency.We kindly encourage everyone in the Cognitive and Neuroscience areas of the Psychology department to please try to keep FriSem in mind when setting recurring meetings/flexible commitments throughout the academic year.