| Over the past 30 months, the NCIEC AA-BA Partnership Workteam has led a national conversation around the current issues in AA-BA transition and the potential barriers to change. Guided by an exhaustive literature review, dialogue with A.A. and B.A. Interpreter Education Directors and other discovery approaches, the NCIEC AA-BA Partnership Workteam has framed its work around the concept of “partnership,” hoping to identify effective models of AA-BA partnerships that lead to successful interpreter education program design.
To this end, the Workteam has engaged in a myriad of activities. Among them:
- Hosting of a BA Directors meeting, a one-day meeting in 2006 that brought together 26 B.A./B.S. Interpreter Education Directors to discuss issues of AA-BA partnership and the importance of ASL standards.
- Hosting of an AA Directors Summit, a two-day opportunity that brought together 65 A.A./A.A.S. Interpreter Education Directors to collectively address issues of transfer, articulation and partnership.
- Publishing Toward Effective Practices: A National Dialogue on AA-BA Partnerships, a summary report of the work conducted between 2006 and 2008 by the AA-BA Partnership Workteam, including a snap-shot of the current AA-BA partnership practices in our field.
- Presenting via PowerPoint the work and findings of the AA-BA Partnership Workteam at CIT Conferences (2006 and 2008).
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| “Constructing new models of partnership requires much time and daring to build creatively outside the box, and perhaps outside one’s comfort zone. Collaboration is hard work…. voluntary collaboration is even harder.”
David Longanecker |
| Change in our field is eminent. In 2012, a minimum of a bachelor’s degree will be a requirement to sit for RID certification. Today in 2009, approximately seventy-five percent (75%) of the 145 identified interpreter education programs are offered at the associate degree level and housed in two-year institutions. While the RID certification mandate will result in a new approach to interpreter education, it is recognized that two-year programs will not simply vanish on July 1, 2012. In alignment with this understanding, providing insight and tools to interpreter educators is a primary goal of the AA-BA Partnership Workteam. |
