Lab Leaders Get Creative with Day of Service Ideas

Over the past few years, the energy has been building: Laboratory leaders are excited about creating Day of Service events, to demonstrate how they’re connected to their communities, and showcase the medical laboratory science and its contributions at the same time. 

The great news? Everyone is coming up with ideas of their own, and the activities they’re sponsoring represent a kaleidoscope of possibilities. 

Jeannie Guglielmo, MS, MAT, MLS(ASCP)^CM, chair of Clinical Laboratory Sciences and clinical associate professor, State University of New York Stony Brook, reports that, in 2024, “We started the first year with hosting a table that was part of a wellness event that was already in place. This brought in a large crowd and we hosted an interactive table with many visually appealing items. The activity helped to spread awareness of the CLS profession and promote community engagement.” They also held pipette challenges, played a game of ‘guess that organism,’ and students made CLS-themed keychains. In 2025, Ms. Guglielmo says, “Students and I embraced the ASCP theme of ‘Scooby Doo’ and created cases based off of the characters. We set up a standalone event in a high traffic flow area of our teaching hospital and school. We also had pipette art, ‘name that organism,’ and ASCP career ladder hand-outs.” 

With regard to the pipette activity, she reports that, “I show them how to pipette, with colored water.” Getting their hands wet, literally, creates enthusiasm among participants. What’s more, Ms. Guglielmo says, “I’m in a teaching hospital. And people are interested in career progression. And they might be working in the finance department, say. And they might say, ‘Hey, I always wanted to get my foot in the door in terms of working with patients.” Service Day events like the ones her team hosts open the minds of participants to the possibilities of working in the healthcare environment that go beyond the more visible professions, such as nursing or pharmacy.  

Her activities-based event has garnered a great deal of participation—more than 100 people in 2025 and more than 250 last year. She’s enthusiastic about what the turnout might be this year. This year, Ms. Guglielmo is creating a participatory game involving diagnosed conditions related to each body part on a Mr. Potato Head figure in keeping with the 2026 Toy Story theme. 

Mr. Potato Head is being used as part of Ms. Guglielmo's Day of Service activities. 

A multifaceted approach 

Meanwhile, at Loyola University in Chicago, Kristen Pesavento, EdD, MA, MLS(ASCP)^CMMB^CM, an assistant professor of Applied Health Sciences and the  Graduate Program Director in Medical Laboratory Science and Director of Academic  Assessment for the Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health, reports that, “Each year, we try to do two projects. We developed a project with Project Cure, a not-for-profit organization that takes medical donations, sorts them, packages them up, and sends them across the world. We sort through all the equipment donated—expired items from hospitals and medical clinics, from hospitals that have closed, and sort them and package them up to go different countries. And they tell you which countries will receive your packages.” 

Further, Dr. Pesavento notes, “We added a blood drive about three years ago,” which both promotes blood donation as well as lets people know what laboratory professionals do.  She reports that combining the blood drive with the educational component has been very successful, as members of the community who arrive for the blood drive are naturally drawn to the tables that are educating people about laboratory careers. The possibilities really are endless, she says, and urges fellow ASCP members to think broadly about what might be possible. 

A broad approach to service  

In South Carolina, a broad approach connects Day of Service with Lab Week. Christie Palladino, MD, Biomedical Science Instructor at the Aiken County Career and Technology Center in Warrenville, South Carolina, worked out a philosophically based approach that ties Day of Service to the broad goal of trying to inspire young people to consider pursuing pathology and laboratory careers that is at the heart of Lab Week. 

Dr. Palladino spent a few years practicing as an obstetrician/gynecologist before going into education, and in her mind, showing off laboratory careers is indeed aligned with the idea behind the Day of Service, as educating the public about lab careers is a form of pay-it-forward service. 

And in her case, Dr. Palladino asked the high school students whom she advises what they might want to do for Day of Service, and they told her that it would be wonderful to set up a demonstration wet lab in order to show younger students a bit of what laboratory professionals do. Dr. Palladino works with high school students across the eight high schools in her district. And, she says, at the suggestion of her high school students, “We started out by literally putting microscopes and pipettes in the back of my Subaru and going to local career fairs in my area, and the students got so much out of it.” Then she hit upon the idea of having the high schoolers guide sixth graders through working with microscopes, for example, guiding them through examining human hairs under a microscope. Why sixth graders? Because, she explains, the education leaders in South Carolina had identified the sixth grade as the perfect grade for introducing basic career education to young people, “because students are starting to solidify their aptitudes during that time. We thought we could provide them with a career-based lesson in laboratory science, and now it’s tied to these district standards, so it’s a win-win.” 

The sixth graders love the hands on experience of doing science, Dr. Palladino says. “The reality of K through 12 education is that kids are not getting authentic hands-on experiences in the laboratory.” And, she adds, “We do hair analysis, because it’s really easy to see a human hair under a microscope; you just see their eyes light up when they’re doing these tasks.” And having high schoolers leading the sixth graders in exploring how to use microscopes, she says, provides that “light-bulb experience” that gets the younger kids excited about the idea of possibly working in a medical laboratory someday. 

What’s absolutely key, she says, is to keep it simple and above all, to make it an approachable, relatable experience.  

Share your Day of Service experience! Email criticalvalues@ascp.org.