Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment®

About the Authors

Brenda Schick, Ph.D.

Brenda Schick has a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Child Language Development from Purdue University. She has a Master's degree in Deaf Education from Washington University. She currently is an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. A native user of ASL, Dr. Schick also has served as an interpreter and a rater for the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID), Inc. She is the former director of Deaf Education at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.

Dr. Schick's research focuses on the development of sign language skills in children, particularly those using ASL. She has conducted research on the relationship of language skills to cognitive skills, (specifically Theory of Mind) in deaf children who have deaf or hearing families as well as those in bilingual versus oral educational settings. She also has conducted and mentored research on educational interpreting, in terms of whether children learn best using direct communication or an interpretation (with Kim Brown Kurz) and in terms of what interpreters include and omit in their interpretations of classrooms (with Elizabeth Caldwell Langer). With Kevin Williams. she has published data on skill levels of working interpreters.

Dr. Schick is the co-editor of an edited volume, published by Oxford University Press, that provides an overview of sign language development across various signed languages (with Marc Marschark and Pat Spencer). She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. She has served as a school board president and board member for the Rocky Mountain Deaf School, a bilingual school for deaf children. She co-authored, with Mary Pat Moeller, Ph.D., a series of children's stories translated into ASL, titled the Read With Me series as well as a videotaped curriculum for hearing parents wanting to learn how to sign so they may communicate with their child, titled the Sign With Me series (with Mary Pat Moeller, Ph.D.).

Sample publications:

Schick, B., M. Marschark, & P. Spencer 2006. Advances in sign language development research. Oxford University Press.

Schick, B. (2003). The development of American Sign Language and manually coded English systems. In M. Marschark & P. Spencer (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education (pp. 219-231). New York: Oxford University Press.

Schick, B. (2001). Interpreting for children: How it’s different. Odyssey, 2, 8-11.

Schick, B., Williams, K. & L. Bolster (1999). Skill levels of educational interpreters. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 4, 144-155

Kevin Williams, M.S., CI/CT

Kevin T. Williams holds his M.S. in Teaching Interpreting from Western Maryland College, Westminster, Maryland. He managed the EIPA for Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, Nebraska in the Director of the EIPA Diagnostic Center.

He currently is an independent consultant.

Other past projects for Williams include serving as the producer for the Sign With Me parent sign language videotape curriculum and the Read With Me ASL storytelling series .

Williams holds dual certification (C.I./C.T.) from the National Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) and is the past-president of the Nebraska Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. He has served as a board member for the Nebraska Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He has been a consultant to the Nebraska Department of Education. Williams is a member of the Conference of Interpreter Trainers as well as the Council of Exceptional Students, the Conference of American Instructors of the Deaf and the National Association of the Deaf. Williams has worked as a content expert for the new RID/NAD joint certification test, the National Interpreting Certificate (NIC).