Mindful Moments from CLEC

Volume 40 Number 3 | June 2026

Summary

This reflective piece highlights the author’s experience at the Clinical Laboratory Educators Conference (CLEC), emphasizing professional growth through education, connection, and shared challenges. The author underscores the value of community, practical learning, and collaboration, noting how CLEC inspires educators and reassures them that common challenges can be addressed collectively.

Heather R. Parks, MS, MLS(ASCP)^CM, Volunteer Contributor

Picture this: it’s 10 pm on Saturday, March 28, and I’m at home in bed laughing and watching, “Making It Stick: Creative Strategies for Teaching Clinical Chemistry,” by Dr. Lacy Moss. Everyone else in the house is asleep, but I am scribbling notes and accessing the session resources. Because virtual access to the sessions ends tonight.

This is the type of Clinical Laboratory Educators Conference (CLEC) fan I’ve become in my three short years of attending. Now I know the tricks to getting all I can out of it. I stayed until the very end. I accessed as many virtual sessions later as I could. I reached out to thank people. I really appreciate everyone who puts so much energy into planning and hosting this event.

For anyone considering teaching, I highly recommend this conference. Last spring, I landed an adjunct faculty position at our local community college, teaching anatomy and physiology. Much of what I learned at CLEC, I was able to apply right away. In fact, I apply CLEC wisdom to my own learning and creating!

This year, ASCLS hosted CLEC in picturesque Bellevue, Washington (just east of Seattle). I was excited to go but also wondered if it was worth my time away from work and family. Once I arrived, I knew I was in the right place.

Connecting with people is my favorite part, but I absorb so much more: educational psychology, compassion, overcoming challenges, fun and innovative ways to teach, and all that our industry partners have to offer. If you are interested in education, but unsure if CLEC is for you, I encourage you to try it.

This year at CLEC, I was struck by so many mindful, funny, and beautiful moments that I want to share with you:

• Entering the hotel the first morning and seeing the friendly South Dakota State University team prepping for their digital microscopy presentation
• Seeing Jeff Clifford at the registration desk, smiling and styling in his microbiology shirt
• Entering the Opening Keynote session and spotting my Texas colleagues
• Reuniting with “classmates” from my first New Educators Workshop two years ago
• Checking out microscopes at the Nikon booth with Terence and Clay (who I enjoy visiting at every CLEC)
• A warm welcome from my University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) friends at their expansive booth (I’m an Arkansas native)
• Laughing over lunch when the conversation turned to bodily specimens that your average person might find repulsive
• Expression of happy relief from a friend who finished her doctoral dissertation
• Celebrity run-in with Doryan (Redding) the Laboratorian, host of our awesome ASCLS Off the Bench Podcast
• Chatting with Demetra “Toula” Castillo outside on a cool Bellevue city sidewalk
• Encountering Sarah Steinberg and hearing about her program’s collaboration with Kazakhstan

I attended so many useful sessions with topics like AI tools, education privacy scenarios, writing for busy professionals, helping students create reference handbooks, being a trauma-informed instructor, harnessing professional development, and inventing case studies based on historical figures. Every session has been useful to me.

I queried my friends and colleagues for their thoughts about CLEC this year. Dr. Audrey Folsom, MLS program director at Arkansas State University, told me about a fun coincidence. On the shuttle to her hotel, she introduced herself to people around her, and the person in front of her overheard. He turned out to be a new program director from northwest Arkansas who was told to look for Dr. Folsom at the conference. A new connection made!

Alyssa Briscoe, professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas, enjoyed her opportunity to be a speaker about her students’ handbook projects. “It was scary, but I have received a ton of great feedback from it,” she said. I think a lot of us will be using Alyssa’s ideas. She told me attending CLEC was a great step to becoming more integrated in our professional community.

For Dr. James Williams, MLT program director at St. Philip’s College, the most memorable and impactful session was the “Busy Educator’s Writing Toolkit.” Professors from University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) shared tips for scholarly writing in small steps, such as micro writing, voice-to-text, the Pomodoro Technique, and writing accountability groups (WAGs). “The panel (from UTMB) really helped me re-commit to scholarly writing,” Dr. Williams attested. “As a result, I have completed and am about to submit a journal article to a professional magazine and am working on a second book.”

Terri Murphy-Sanchez, MLS program director at University of Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio, offers a reassuring bottom line: “I always enjoy going to CLEC because it reminds you that you are not the only academic program experiencing something. More often than not, other programs are experiencing the same issues—so it is nice to hear how others have problem solved.”

I agree; attending CLEC has been transformative to my personal and professional goals as I move into education. When the conference ended, I took a quiet, drizzly walk under the Bellevue evergreens, reflecting on the conference, friends, and my path ahead. Will I see you next year at CLEC 2027 in Arlington, Texas?

Heather Parks is a Medical Laboratory Scientist at University Hospital and is Adjunct Professor at Alamo Colleges in San Antonio, Texas.

“‘I always enjoy going to CLEC because it reminds you that you are not the only academic program experiencing something. More often than not, other programs are experiencing the same issues—so it is nice to hear how others have problem solved.’”

– Terri Murphy-Sanchez, MLS program director at University of Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio