Waching daily May 30 2017

Hello, I am Darryl Luton, Co-Chair and Professor with the ASL-English Interpreting Preparation Program (AEIP) here at JCCC.

Hello, I am Stacey Storme and like Darryl I work here at JCCC as Co-Chair and Professor.

We want to share some updates with both the Deaf and Interpreting communities about recent happenings with our program.

Before I go into detail, I'd like to share how proud we are of our 30+ year history.

We are also extremely proud of being nationally accredited - which is a big accomplishment for us!

We have always worked hard to keep up with changes in the field, continously improving our curriculum,

doing whatever we can to best prepare our students for work as interpreters.

We have been following changes of requirements and expectations at state and national levels regarding certification.

Take, for example, providing a BA degree in interpreting. We are unable to do so.

Since we are housed at a community college, we are only able to award Associate Degrees.

An AAS does not adequately prepare students for a career in interpreting.

Another issue we know has not been effective is the teaching and learning of language and interpreting at the same time.

We have long known this does not work and it is time to stop this approach and make necessary changes to our program.

As of May 2019 our AEIP program at JCCC will no longer offer an AAS in ASL/English Interpreting.

Please understand our department will remain and strengthen our focus on ASL and Deaf Culture.

With the goal of helping students have a strong foundation of skills and knowledge in these areas before beginning to learn the work of interpretation.

One direction we may take with this transition is to offer an AA with "emphasis" in ASL and Deaf Culture.

Now I'll turn it over to Stacey to share future plans of our program.

Stacey: As Darryl shares, we are undergoing major changes.

We are thrilled that JCCC has granted me a year-long sabbatical to attend to this transition.

As such my focus will be in two major areas.

The first area is to look at the design of the new AA degree. I will work with the faculty here to develop new curricula and course sequence.

The new AA will not be designed to prepare students to graduate and begin working as interpreters.

Rather it will focus on preparing students for transferring to continue learning the work of interpreting or another discipline.

The main goal is for students to build a strong foundation of ASL to work with the Deaf community.

The second area of focus during my sabbatical is dialogue with Universities in Kansas to identify interest in establishing a new program.

JCCC will not be involved with establishing that new program.

However, JCCC has granted me time to investigate and collaborate on this endeavor.

I have already begun conversations with a few Universities and I am happy to say there is potential.

I ask for your patience as I cannot share any details as of yet. As soon as agreements are confirmed, I promise to share information!

Throughout this process I will stay in communication with JCCC colleagues, advisory board and administration.

As for our program today, these changes we are undergoing will not take place immediately.

We have already accepted a new cohort of students to begin this fall.

We will be accepting one final cohort to start next fall and graduate with their AAS in May of 2019.

We envision students being able to take classes for the new AA beginning the fall of 2018.

There will no longer be an application, screening or interview process for this new AA.

Students will be able to take the courses identified for the sequence focused on ASL and Deaf Culture.

During this process we look forward to these changes and contuing to be a part of preparing students for continuing their studies to pursue future work with the Deaf community.

Darryl: It is our intention to make this transition as smooth as possible;

both the implementation of the new course sequence to be offered at JCCC and the collaboration with the identifited university.

If you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to contact me or Stacey.

You can find our e-mail addresses or VP numbers on the website.

We both thank you for your support!