Press Release: RID VIEWS Volume 23: Issue 8
NCIEC Update

The NCIEC is moving right along with Year One initiatives, one of which is conducting national needs assessments, as mentioned in last month’s issue of VIEWS. We are well underway with the collection of various stakeholder assessments, including those from practitioners, consumers, and educators. Our vision at the NCIEC is to create new opportunities in interpreter education and advance the field of sign language interpretation by drawing upon the energy and wisdom of interpreters, educators, consumers and other stakeholders. As such, we value your input and look forward to your participation. We are working to translate the needs assessments into Spanish and into ASL, in order to effectively reach more stakeholders. Soon we’ll be adding an online version of our needs assessments in order to reach more stakeholders in educational and government settings. We are also looking forward to more extensive collection of input through interviews and focus groups conducted with stakeholders.

In addition to attending the various conferences occurring this summer and disseminating the assessments, the NCIEC is identifying current and effective practices in several areas of interpreting and interpreting education. To date, we have held focus groups, meetings, and interviews on a variety of topics including:

Deaf Interpreting: The Deaf Interpreting project team has begun a compilation of a bibliography of resources on Deaf interpreting to be posted on the Internet; they are working to evaluate a 9-month Deaf interpreter preparation program in Bridgeport, CT; they have conducted one-on-one interviews with Deaf/Hearing interpreting teams and interpreter educators, and completed a pilot survey in March 2006; and they have sponsored a 4-day national retreat for educators and practitioners to look at issues in Deaf interpreting and interpreter preparation in June 2006.

Medical: The CATIE Center at The College of St. Catherine is hosting focus groups on interpreting in medical interpreting as well as a small expert group.  We are currently soliciting input on a beta version of a medical interpreting resources website and anticipate having a working version of the site up by the end of the year.  The resources identified for this website along with the input of the focus groups and the expert group will form a foundation for the eventual development of a sequence of post-baccalaureate courses on interpreting in medical settings.

 Mentoring: The Mentoring work team hosted the “Effective Practices in Mentoring” symposium. Over 20 mentors from across the US, each recognized in their regions for leadership and cutting-edge projects, attended the meeting, sharing their experiences and insight into effective mentoring of current and prospective interpreters.

The NCIEC is also excited to participate actively in the upcoming Conference of Interpreter Trainers conference in October. Consortium members will be representing the NCIEC on a variety of topics, including: AA to BA, Deaf Interpreting, Marketing, Leadership, Mentoring, Discourse Analysis, Medical Interpreting, and the National Needs Assessments. We are honored to have the opportunity to present the vision and mission of the NCIEC for interpreting education at the closing plenary session at the convention.

Originally published in RID Views, Volume 23: Issue 8, September 2006, p. 34.