TLC was recognized by the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence for achieving the Interest Recognition (Level 1) at the TNCPE annual conference March 23. The TLC Leadership Team completed the organizational profile using the Baldridge Excellence Framework. The Leadership Team is already working on the application process for the next level.
TLC Executive Director Janice Rodriguez participated as a member of the Tennessee delegation for the “Virtual Language Advocacy Days 2022: Language at the Intersection” held Feb. 2-4. The annual event is sponsored by the JNCL-NCLIS (Join National Committee for Languages and the National Council for Languages and International Studies).
Janice and the Tennessee delegation met with legislative representatives from the offices of Tennessee’s U.S. Senators Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, and U.S. Representatives Mark Green, Jim Cooper, and Tim Burchett, to discuss the most pressing issues facing language education policy. Of particular interest to TLC was JNCL-NCLIS’s support for the passage of the Senate version of the Advancing International and Foreign Language Education Act (HR 2940/S. 1453) and the authorization of the Biliteracy Educational Seal and Teaching (BEST) Act (S. 680/HR 1731).
We are so excited to welcome three new Project Managers to our Interpretation and Translation Department. ITS Project Managers serve as the point of contact external clients for interpretation and/or translation projects.
Eileen Bernstein has served as a translator with TLC since 2020. She has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from the University of New Hampshire and a master’s degree in political science from George Washington University.
Mahasweta Panigrahy has most recently worked as an early learning project coordinator at First Presbyterian Preschool in Franklin. Mahasweta holds degrees from Berhampur (India) University and the University of the Cumberlands.
Adrian McDaniel is a former program manager for International Scholarship and Tuition Services Inc. Adrian holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations with minors in French and Spanish from Middle Tennessee State University; as well as a master’s in international business from Southern New Hampshire University.
Welcome, Eileen, Mahasweta and Adrian!
We are so excited to welcome our new Director of World Languages at TLC – Dr. Brian Barnett. He comes to TLC from the University of Minnesota, where he served as a senior lecturer in French and as the director of language instruction in French.
Brian has a bachelor’s in French and Spanish from Kansas State University, a master’s in French from Indiana University and a doctorate in education from Indiana University.
TLC, in collaboration with Vanderbilt University Medical Center Interpreter Services graduated eight students from the 80-hour, 15-week program on Thursday, June 3. Languages represented include Spanish, Russian, and Arabic, and participants connected from across the state and beyond.
ESL to Go, a grant-funded program that is part of the Tennessee Language Center (TLC), has been able to provide free English classes to over 1,700 students in the Nashville area with the help of generous funders including the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. ESL to Go was recently awarded another year of funding from Dollar General.
ESL to Go was founded in hopes of helping refugees overcome barriers to attending classes, with transportation being at the top of the list. ESL to Go uses a “classroom on wheels” in the form of a Ford F-650 truck equipped to be a fully functioning classroom to take English classes to the areas where refugees live. ESL to Go also works closely with local refugee resettlement agencies, community organizations, apartment complexes, and churches who allow ESL to Go to use free classroom space, so TLC-trained teachers are able to meet with refugee students close to their homes.
Recently, ESL to Go has expanded class offerings to include virtual classes in order to continue helping students access classes during the time of social distancing.
Some translation mistakes can have a lasting, if mostly harmless, impact. Like early Biblical translators thinking Moses was “horned” instead of “radiant,” leading to some really interesting sculptures, statues, and illuminations of Moses with horns on his head. Or people thinking that Mars had manmade “canals” on it instead of erosion-created “channels” due to a translation error. But other translation mistakes can have lifelong, or even deadly, consequences, as Richard Ponce-de-Leon Monosalva, Interpretation & Translation Project Manager, illustrated during his presentation “Language Access in the Courts” at a recent MTAS Conference for Municipal Court Clerks from across Tennessee on May 21.
TLC provides certified court interpreters, and also offers training for court interpretation throughout the year.
KNOXVILLE – The Tennessee Foreign Language Institute is set to become an entity of the University of Tennessee system and the sixth agency of the UT Institute for Public Service on July 1 2018, thanks to legislation by the Tennessee General Assembly.
The legislation eliminates the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute’s governing board, transfers its resources and assets to UT and renames it the Tennessee Language Center (TLC). Under this new arrangement, the center will tailor its mission to providing language services to state and local government entities in support of industrial recruitment, economic development and provision of government services. Through its five current agencies, IPS provides technical consulting and training to state and local governments, business and industry and law enforcement.
“We look forward to adding the important resources of the Tennessee Language Center to the rich portfolio of expertise and outreach already offered by our Institute for Public Service,” said UT President Joe DiPietro. “The ability to remove language barriers, whether as Tennessee competes in an increasingly globalized economy or as the state seeks to serve its increasingly diverse population, is an important asset I’m proud we can contribute.”
With the mission of Serving Business and Government to improve the lives of Tennesseans, IPS welcomes the Tennessee Language Center.
“This is a great opportunity for IPS to further our mission and work in Tennessee; and expand our already robust service offerings,” IPS Vice President Herb Byrd III said. “We look forward to welcoming the center staff to UT and adding 18 employees who are dedicated to public service.
The language center’s staff will become full-time employees of the university, but will remain headquartered in Nashville.
“We are excited to become part of a statewide university system,” said TLC Director Janice Rodriguez. “The Institute for Public Service has significant outreach across the state and that will be a tremendous asset as we provide our services to governments, industries and others.