RID VIEWS Volume 23: Issue 6
NCIEC Needs Assessment Queries Interpreters and Students

Submitted by the NCIEC

Since our first face-to-face meeting in January, the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers (NCIEC) has been, in the words of Dr. Bruce Tuckman, “forming, storming, norming, and performing!”  Far from being off in our respective regional corners, our six Centers have been exploring the nature of our new collaborative, actively interacting on Year 1 development projects.  We believe that the new Consortium structure – and the collaborations it fosters with others – has the potential to bring about far-reaching, measurable enhancements in interpreter education and professional development.  We would like to draw RID members’ attention to a major focus of NCIEC’s Year 1 activities, one in which we urge your collaboration. We have embarked on a mandated and much-needed national needs assessment.

Interpreters and Interpreting Students: Yours are the first perspectives we are seeking!   National Consortium representatives have taken the needs assessment survey to Alaska for RID Region V and will be present at all of the upcoming RID Regional Conferences.  Look for the Interpreter and Interpreting Student surveys and be sure to make your perspectives known!

The purpose of this survey is to determine the current and short-term future needs in interpreting and interpreting education.  The surveys are designed in sections to gather the perceptions of practitioners, including credentialed interpreters, pre-credentialed interpreters, novice interpreters with less than one year experience following completion of an interpreting degree program, and others who work as interpreters but may not fit any of these categories; and students currently in academic degree programs regarding effective education and professional development strategies.  The needs assessment will also give us a profile of currently working interpreters and the career goals of current students, where practitioners work and where students hope to work.  It will help us get at an approximation of the size of the current workforce and help us predict fluctuation in numbers that might arise as practitioners retire and new interpreters enter the field and attain credentials.  Through the student section of the questionnaire, we hope to elicit perceptions of the effectiveness of current undergraduate education in preparing work-ready interpreters, and the level of need for transition-to-work or mentoring programs.

The needs assessment process will ultimately collect essential information not just from interpreters, but also from consumers, educators, and service providers about the current state of interpreting, interpreting education, and consumer involvement in the U.S.  We are pleased to be working in collaboration with RID, CSUN, and University of Tennessee on this project. A formidable undertaking, the needs assessment will be conducted over several months, in a variety of venues and settings. The results of the needs assessment this year will inform future assessments and the direction of NCIEC activities.

Please participate!  Other opportunities to participate will be available to practitioners and students who do not plan to attend the regional conferences this year. Please be sure to contact the NCIEC www.asl.neu.edu/nciec for more information.

Reference: Tuckman, Bruce. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63, 384-399.

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.

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