by Daniel Greene
On Friday, June 14th, members of the first cohort of Western Oregon University’s Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies program, with an optional emphasis in Teaching Interpreting, celebrated the completion of their degrees. Graduates of the program, which is conducted mostly online with two two-week summer colloquia, participated in a hooding ceremony both on campus and via videoconference.
In addition to employing multiple communication technologies in their coursework, these alumni are the university’s first to publish theses on the Internet. Utilizing WOU’s new partnership with Digital Commons, they have published theses including “Do we eat our young and one another? Horizontal violence among signed language interpreters” (Ott, 2012), “Keeping it vague: A study of vague language in an American Sign Language corpus and implications for interpreting between American Sign Language and English” (Greene, 2013), and “Self-Care in the field of interpreting” (Zenizo, 2013). Topics currently in publication include community contact, interpreter narratives, interpreter interactions, curriculum development, teaming practices, transition shock, and leading supervision. Abstracts and full texts can be retrieved from http://digitalcommons.wou.edu/theses/
Dr. Elisa Maroney and Amanda Smith announced the Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies program at WOU in April 2011. Candidates submitted their applications within weeks of the announcement, and the first cohort started in July 2011. All entrants remained in the program. The second cohort started Monday, June 24th, 2013.
Daniel Greene, MA, NIC Master, is a proud graduate of WOU’s MA in Interpreting Studies program with an emphasis in Teaching Interpreting. He is now interviewing for an Assistant Professor position.