Descriptive Panel Leadership
Fall 2025
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Course overview
For working Panel Leaders: Tap the wisdom of experienced panel leaders to improve your skills in and out of the panel room. Learn and practice effective techniques for all aspects of leading and managing a descriptive analysis panel.
Course Schedule and Information
On Tuesday, November 4th, we will have a light breakfast available beginning at 8:30 a.m. ET, and the course will begin at 9 a.m. ET. Tuesday through Thursday we will finish around 4 to 5 p.m.
The course will wrap up on Friday, November 7th around noon. We will have grab and go lunch options available for those that are traveling.
The course will wrap up on Friday, November 7th around noon. We will have grab and go lunch options available for those that are traveling.
Course Description
What you will learn:
- How to successfully select, cultivate, monitor, & motivate a descriptive panel
- To identify & assess your sensory evaluation practices & ensure they meet your team’s goals
- How to approach challenges and successes in your panel environment
- Methodology and applications of trained panels for sensory evaluations
- How to coach and guide panelists on components of descriptive analysis
- Controls necessary for panel success
- Areas of opportunity personal growth as a panel leader
- Leadership skills for conducting your panel efficiently, effectively, and with confidence
- Best practices for leading virtual panels
- Skills required of successful panel leaders
- Leading group discussions
- Continued panelist training
- Panelist feedback
What you will do:
- Practice developing terminology/lexicons and deepen your facilitation skills
- Collaborate with course instructors & other panel leaders to problem solve panel challenges
- Create a protocol in an unfamiliar category
- Examine how test controls and context can influence sensory verdicts
- Audit and develop strategies to augment your panel’s daily practices
- Identify opportunities and strategies to grow panel skills and morale
- Discuss virtual panel leading adaptations and techniques with other panel leaders
Who Should Attend
Sensory professionals who are currently leading descriptive analysis panels (Spectrum, Flavor or Texture Profile, QDA, Odor profile, Skin feel, Fabric feel, etc.)
Important:
Get to know us
Instructors
Lisa Schroeder
Project Manager
Lisa Schroeder currently serves as a Project Manager, Product Understanding at Sensory Spectrum with expertise in all aspects of panel execution. Lisa has over twenty years of experience forming, training, leading, and managing both descriptive analysis and quality panels. She has also overseen and maintained sensory quality programs in food manufacturing production. She enjoys developing protocols for training panels as well as creating protocols for challenging attributes and categories. She has trained panels in Europe and Asia and has spent hundreds of hours assisting with developing scales and references relevant to international local markets and palates. Lisa has a passion for coaching and mentoring panel leaders and is also adept at helping panelists understand complicated methodology. Lisa has worked in the field of sensory for over 20 years and has held positions in food manufacturing sensory quality, panel leadership and panel management.
Lee Stapleton
Senior Director of Training and Education
With Sensory Spectrum since 1998, Lee utilizes her 25+ years of sensory science experience as a senior trainer for descriptive analysis & quality, a product focused creative facilitator, a strategic consultant, and an expert evaluator across a wide range of products and ingredients consumers eat, drink, smell, apply, use, and wear. Lee trained as a Food Scientist at Clemson University and N.C. State. She is Chair Elect for ASTM’s Sensory Evaluation Committee E-18 and a member of the Society of Sensory Professionals (SSP). Lee has appeared on television, in print, and online on the topic of sensory evaluation, has presented at numerous conferences, and has authored or edited multiple book chapters in the field of sensory science.
