Being a clinical laboratory science educator means wearing many hats: instructor, recruiter, mentor, curriculum designer, assessor, and sometimes counselor. And you often wear them with limited time, a small team, and students whose needs keep changing.
You’re not alone in this. The 2027 Clinical Laboratory Educators Conference (CLEC) program is built around these challenges. Join us February 4-6 at the Loews Arlington Hotel in Arlington, Texas, or virtually, and come home with practical answers you can use right away.
Here are eight of the most common challenges educators face and the CLEC sessions that will help you solve them. View the CLEC 2027 brochure with full session descriptions.
1. “My students just aren’t engaged.”
Students struggle to stay focused, take part, and remember what they learned in traditional lectures. If you’ve ever looked out at a room full of glazed-over eyes, these sessions are for you:
- The Attention-Distraction Seesaw: Practical Strategies for Capturing Student Focus
- Beyond PowerPoint: Increasing Student Engagement through Active Learning in MLS Education
- How to “Gameify” the Laboratory
- Beyond Games: Structured Active Learning and Low-Cost Simulation in MLS Education
- Warm up to AI: Tips for Creating Engaging Recall Activities using Artificial Intelligence
2. “We need to fill our seats.”
Attracting students to laboratory science programs, and keeping enrollment steady, is one of the most urgent problems facing our profession. Learn fresh ways to build your pipeline:
- Rethinking the Pipeline: Using Categorical Certificates to Increase Student Enrollment
- Bringing the Lab to Life: Effective Outreach Strategies to Inspire Future Medical Laboratory Professionals
- Planting the Seed: Recruitment Tools to Grow the Next Generation of Laboratory Scientists
- High Schools Build Human Capital for Laboratory Science
- Gamified Approaches to Admissions in Medical Laboratory Education
3. “My students have the technical skills but aren’t workplace-ready.”
Technical skill is only part of the job. Students also need professionalism, resilience, confidence, and the soft skills that help them succeed at the bench. These sessions focus on the whole professional:
- Beyond Technical Skills: Teaching Professionalism in Laboratory Education
- No One Taught Us This in School: Coaching Skills for Laboratory Educators
- We Validate Everything Except Ourselves: Teaching Resilience, Purpose, and Professional Identity in Laboratory Education
- Making It Stick: A Guide to Phlebotomy Education
4. “How do I support every learner without lowering the bar?”
Programs need better ways to meet different learning needs while keeping standards high. These sessions offer practical, inclusive strategies, plus advice on caring for yourself while you care for your students:
- Through a Different Lens: Teaching and Supporting Color Vision Deficient Learners
- Cultivating Neuroinclusive Talent: Supporting Neurodivergent Students and Unlocking Their Strengths
- Supporting Students without Losing Yourself: Boundaries, Human Factors, and Sustainable Educator Practice
5. “Our curriculum is falling behind.”
Keeping your curriculum current while meeting accreditation, certification, and workforce expectations is a constant balancing act, especially for small programs. Discover new tools and approaches:
- AI-Assisted Tools to Accelerate Curriculum Revision in a Department of One
- Reimagining Evidence-Based Teaching: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining the Modern Classroom
- Reimagining the Immunology Laboratory: Integrating Basic Science, Clinical Diagnostics, and Active Learning
- From Variant to Diagnosis: Teaching Molecular Diagnostics through Real Clinical Cases
6. “They know the content but can’t apply it.”
Knowing the material and using it to troubleshoot, solve problems, and make decisions are two different skills. These sessions help you close that gap:
- Teaching Advanced Quality Control Troubleshooting to Students
- Slow Down! Embracing Ambiguity in Instruction and Learning
- Beyond the Student Lab: Implementing a “Real World” Laboratory Simulation
- Beyond Games: Structured Active Learning and Low-Cost Simulation in MLS Education
- Crack the Code: Designing Gamified Interprofessional Learning for Med Lab in Academic and Clinical Programs
7. “Nobody prepared me for leadership or career growth.”
Many of us became educators because we’re great laboratorians, not because we were trained in mentoring, promotion, or leading a team. CLEC can help you grow your own career:
- New Educators Workshop: The Strategic Mentee
- Faculty Development as a Catalyst for Excellence: Leveraging Promotion in MLS Education
- Leading through Difficult Conversations: Building Positive Cultures in Medical Laboratory Education
8. “Assessment and scholarship feel overwhelming.”
Meaningful program assessment, research literacy, and scholarly productivity don’t have to be intimidating. These sessions offer practical, approachable methods:
- Making Program Assessment Meaningful: Using Simple Statistical Procedures to Drive Continuous Quality Improvement
- Let’s Get Lit! Methods for Teaching Graduate Scientific Literacy
- From Lab Notes to Publications: Practical Medical Writing for Clinical Laboratory Science Programs
- Effective Approaches for Graduate Medical Laboratory Science Education
Bring your challenges. Leave with solutions.
Whatever is keeping you up at night, someone at CLEC has faced it, too, and found a way through it. Beyond the sessions, CLEC connects you with a community of educators, program leaders, and administrators who share ideas and build lasting connections.
Already registered? Tell your colleagues you’ll be there with our #CLEC2027 social media images, and start planning which sessions you can’t miss.