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Press Release: VIEWS, October 2007
Video Relay Interpreting Summit
Historic Gathering of Key VRS Representatives a Worthwhile Event!
By Beverly Hollrah
It was an incredible Indian Summer week in Washington, D.C., - sunny days, trees just thinking about their autumn colors, and a breathtaking harvest moon.  Not that anyone who attended the first-ever Academia-Industry Collaboration: An Essential Partnership for Preparing Qualified Personnel Resources for the Video Relay Services Industry had a lot of time to enjoy the lovely leftovers of summer.   For September 25-27, 2007, representatives from eight Video Relay Service companies found themselves engrossed in dialogues of discovery as they identified common issues and concerns, and worked toward articulating the needs that exist to ensure a larger, more highly qualified workforce.

No one in the field can be unaware of the extraordinary impact of video interpreting.  Employed new technology is opening doors of opportunities for Deaf people in unprecedented ways…and there are innovations just outside our field of vision that at the moment have as of yet unrealized possibilities.  Innovation that wields such explosive force will inevitably create change that results in challenges that cannot be ignored.  Identifying and finding solutions to these challenges is a call to duty for the two entities that educate and hire interpreters for this new world of work.  
In response to this current reality, the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers (NCIEC) has established a multi-year initiative implemented by the Interpreting via Video Work Team.  The Work Team will lead a national conversation about issues in video relay and video remote services, identifying current and effective practices as well as education/training needed to support interpreters in mastering requisite competencies to work in these settings.  The goal is to forge stronger links between industry partners providing VRS and/or VRI services and Interpreter Education, resulting in ways to leverage strengths and resources that will increase the capacity and quality of interpreter services.  

This year, the Interpreting via Video Work Team is focused on identifying common needs and issues of the industry as a way to provide input to Interpreter Education regarding essential educational and training needs of interpreters working in video settings.  To this end, the Work Team sponsored the noteworthy face-to-face VRS Summit in the Kellogg Conference Center at Gallaudet University. 

The Summit
The main goal of the Summit was to begin a dialogue among VRS vendors and NCIEC regarding the current state of the art, the vision of effective practices, and the educational needs that exist to achieve effective practices. The Summit focused on learning from each other and creating a collegiate network.  An initial categorization of the standards and practices was done as part of this collaborative work.  As well, time was spent identifying core competencies necessary for VRS interpreters and research/resources needed to advance the industry. 

The VRS industry has grown rapidly and with rapid growth comes issues of standards and quality control. Although with any business venture, there is competition for customers and privacy regarding business practices, the time has come for VRS vendors and Interpreter Educators to have some level of transparency and comparability for making complex training and personnel decisions that advance the industry in a way that effectively meets consumer needs. A lack of early collaboration between interpreter education and Departments of Education during the late 1970s caused a critical shortage of qualified personnel to work in K-12 settings, and resulted in the current state of substandard interpreting services being delivered to deaf children in public education.  Both academia and the K-12 industry have struggled to overcome this reality for three decades with only minimal advancement. This history becomes a strong argument for establishing and ensuring a long-term academia-industry collaborative relationship to provide optimal solutions to the personnel needs of the VRS industry.

The Work Team intentionally selected to focus on the positive as a basis for the relationship building with and among VRS vendors.  Summit participants were introduced to the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process as a systematic way to approach change.  It was not a difficult task to find agreement that the video interpreting industry is a human organization, technology not withstanding.  “Unlike many behavioral approaches to change, AI does not focus on changing people.  Instead, it invites people to engage in building the kinds of organizations and communities that they want to work and live in.  AI thus involves collaborative discovery of what makes a [partnership] more effective…” (Mohr & Watkins, 2002, p. 4).  The process began by sharing of stories of excellence from each participant’s own life experiences. 

Through a series of activities, the VRS Summit participants moved to a stage that allowed them to create both non-verbal and verbal images they collaboratively created.   The possibility statements that emerged were:

Group 1:  We are champions of collaboration within VRS and provider community for the continued innovation and promotion of mutual understanding and benefit for all stakeholders.

Group 2:  We are an organic collaboration seeking to impact the advancement of the interpreting field by building a vested interest through upholding the principles of inclusion, implementation and exchange of ideas. 

Group 3:  We are a group of industry leaders committed to excellence through collaboration built on the fundamentals of communication, mutual respect, and integrity, contributing to effectively preparing interpreters for the demands of the video arena.

Being inspired by the commonality that was evident in their visions for the future, participants began a series of discussions related to three primary topics related to interpreting via video:  a) competencies, b) standards and c) research & resources.  With Work Team members facilitating, the participants rotated tables and each of them had the opportunity to interact with their peers on the three topics.  Several flip charts were used up in the process of collecting the insight provided! 

As the meeting drew to a close on Thursday, September 27th, the positive synergy of the Summit was unquestionable. Participants expressed their sense of appreciation, and several used the word “honored”, for the invitation to be involved at the beginning of a movement that all felt had the potential for a positive, long-term relationship between VRS, NCIEC and Interpreter Education in general.  The majority of participants indicated their interest in continued engagement with the Interpreting via Video effort.

The Summit not only illuminated the benefit of the diversity of thought and approaches among us but also the unity shared in the desire to support interpreters in mastering requisite competencies, as well as enlarging the pool of highly qualified interpreters, with the end result of improved customer services.  After the Summit, VRS representatives re-entered their corporate worlds recognizing that:

• collaboration is hard work and voluntary collaboration is even harder;
• building new models requires much time and daring if we are to construct ways to create a collaborative and positive future;
• “no” really isn’t an option;
• we are all unique but we have common constraints and shared needs; and
• we now know what the initials NCIEC mean!

The next steps for Interpreting via Video Work Team include accumulating and assembling all the information collected from the VRS Summit participants and making it available to them for review and feedback.  Simultaneously, the Work Team is planning a national summit for vendors of video remote interpreting, to be hosted in December.  This summit will follow the same Appreciative Inquiry process and harvest responses to the same issues, though through what is expected to be a different lens.  During spring 2008, various expert and consensus-building groups will be convened to validate the findings of the two video interpreting summits.  As the work products are finalized, avenues of information disseminate (e.g., presentations, publications) will be sought.   

Summit Planning Committee:  Beverly Hollrah, Chair, Richard Laurion, Leilani Johnson, Cynthia Roy. 

The Work Team extends a special thank you to Anna Witter-Merithew for facilitating the Appreciative Inquiry process. 

Summit Participants:

Front row: Janet Schwall, Branton Stewart, Marc Holmes, Anne Girard, Norma L. Oldfield; Second row: Dr. Mei Kennedy, Helsa Borinstein, Rich Hall, Leilani Johnson, Liz Fischer; Third row: Debbie Peterson, Gino Gouby, Anna Witter-Merithew, Beverly Hollrah, Laura Rodriguez, Kathryn Graham; Last row: Richard Laurion, Dr. Cynthia Roy, Jeff Rosen.

For more information about the Interpreting via Video initiative, please contact Beverly Hollrah at beverly.hollrah@gallaudet.edu.

Biographical Profile

Established in 2005, the National Consortium is a collaborative network comprised of the National Interpreter Education Center and five Regional Interpreter Education Centers. Its goal is to significantly increase the number of qualified and credentialed interpreters in the field by forging collaborative links and facilitating practice and product sharing among interpreter education service providers, practitioners, educators, and consumers nationwide. This VRS Summit is one of the many steps toward achieving that goal.

Consortium Members:  Northeastern University, Gallaudet University, College of St. Catherine, University of Arkansas at Little Rock/University of Northern Colorado, and Western Oregon University/El Camino College

For more information about NCIEC, go to www.asl.neu.edu/nciec/

The U.S. Department of Education Rehabilitation Services Administration, Interpreter Training Grants, 2005-2010, funds this and all initiatives of the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers.