Home | Press Releases | The National Consortium Website: Useful for Getting Started...Or Just Getting Information!

Press Release: RID VIEWS, May 2008
The National Consortium Website: Useful for Getting Started...Or Just Getting Information!
By Sarah Snow, Web/IT team leader
The National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers is dedicated to improving the field of sign language interpreting – in accomplishing our work initiatives we are constantly gathering new information that we share through our website.  Haven’t visited the website? It’s at www.asl.neu.edu/nciec/.

The National Consortium’s website has all the information you would want about our group: who we are, what we’re working on, and why. We are made up of five regional centers and one national center. Together we make up The National Consortium, and we’re working together to gather information and make it available to interpreters and interpreter educators in one convenient place. We’re excited about all of the new information we’re presenting through our website, and hope that people will find it useful and informative. As you’re looking around the website, you can use the breadcrumbs at the top of the page to find your way back to where you began. This makes navigating easy for everyone, and it makes it hard to get lost in all of the information.

You can click on Map of Regions and Centers if you’re interested in seeing how the National Consortium has been set up, and which region you’re in. When you rollover any region on the map, you’ll see a list of which states they cover, and you can click on the region to go directly to their website. Each regional center’s website is full of information about what they’re doing, both regionally and nationally, and has been painstakingly designed to help serve your needs. Once you’re on a regional site, if you ever want to jump back to the National Consortium, you just need to click on the National Consortium’s logo – it’s easy!

The National Consortium has created work teams to help accomplish its goals, and each work team’s activities are listed on the Projects page. There is a description of each work team’s initiatives, and what they’re currently working on. Want more information? Just click on the email link at the bottom of the description, and we’ll put you in contact with the team leader.

Some of the work teams have created websites associated with ours that are designed for a specific target population. One of these, discoverinterpreting.com, is specifically for people interested in getting started in the field of interpreting, and is full of great information about programs, different specializations within the field of interpreting, and how to get from point A (thinking about it) to point B (doing it!). The site also includes testimonials that everyone should check out, newbie or experienced interpreter. You can visit this site by clicking on the National Consortium’s Recommended Websites link, or go straight to www.discoverinterpreting.com.

We use the information generated by our work teams to create the National Consortium Resource Center. We have also included information collected by Project TIEM.Online during the 2000-2005 RSA grant cycle (formerly published on their Teaching and Mentoring Resource Site). To visit the National Consortium Resource Center, just click on the link in the National Consortium website, or go directly to www.asl.neu.edu/nciec/resource/.  You can search the site by key word, if you already know what you’re looking for, or you can select from the list of topics if you’d rather browse around. 

The Resource Center has information about interpreting, mentoring, and links to additional resources for interpreters and interpreter educators. If you’re a mentor or an interpreter looking for activities to help you work on specific skills, you can visit the Skills Enhancement Activities pages – just select the type of skill you’d like to work on, and you’ll be taken to a list of activities that can be printed out and used immediately. Interested in mentoring? We’ve got information about Model Mentorship Programs, lists of certified mentors that you can contact through our Master Mentor Directory, and links to additional information and tools for learning about mentoring. 

Something that might be especially useful for people just getting started in interpreting is the website’s comprehensive list of Professional and Consumer Organizations. It’s a great resource to use if you’re doing any kind of research, or if you’d like a quick link to the organizations themselves. There are many different organizations listed that reflect the diversity of groups in this field. The list can be easily read through so that you can decide which organizations you’d like to learn more about by clicking on their names and visiting their websites.

One of our most recent additions has been a comprehensive list of AA and BA programs across the United States that offer either certificates or degrees in interpreting. This information was gathered by the National Consortium’s AA to BA Transitions work team, and then organized into a rubric appropriate for the Internet. If you work in an interpreter education program, you may have seen the work team’s web-based survey asking for the very same information we’ve now shared online. When you visit the Resource Center, you can click on the link to Interpreter Education Programs to see the entire list, which can be sorted by program, state, or type of degree. We thought these would be the most useful search criteria for people interested in attending a program, whether they’re looking for a refresher course, or getting into the field as a beginner. You can click on the links to the individual programs for more specific information about their offerings.

All of the National Consortium’s presentations and papers can be accessed via the website by clicking on NCIEC Presentations and Papers. This page contains links to all presentations made by National Consortium work team members, in case you missed them (or enjoyed them so much you’d like a copy of your very own!), and to published papers such as the first of four national needs assessments. We completed the Interpreting Practitioners National Needs Assessment in April 2007, and have published the findings for those who are interested at www.asl.neu.edu/nciec/resource/docs/PracRept.pdf. We will also be conducting national needs assessments for interpreter students, interpreter educators, and interpreting consumers. As each ensuing report is completed it will also be published here, so please keep visiting our site if you’re interested!

The National Consortium has plans to keep expanding this Resource Center as our teams continue to work hard and produce more information that will be relevant to the field of interpreting. Future plans include a mentor portfolio area where interpreters can post portfolios that can be shared with prospective employers and mentors, and more interactive postings that will include feedback from users like you. The National Consortium is excited to be developing something we hope will become a commonly used resource for both new and experienced interpreters.

For more information about the National Consortium, please visit our website at www.asl.neu.edu/nciec/.

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The National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers is funded from 2005 – 2010 by the U.S. Department of Education RSA CFDA #84.160A and B, Training of Interpreters for Individuals Who Are Deaf and Individuals Who Are Deaf-Blind.