Clark State College and Judicial Court Reporting (JCR) program partner Stark State College are celebrating National Court Reporting & Captioning week by offering a free virtual orientation to learn more about the online JCR associate degree program. Join the event via Zoom on Wednesday, February 10 at 6:30 p.m. by logging in to zoom.us/j/6717219266.
Clark State and Stark State have partnered in offering the joint National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) approved JCR online degree program for five years. In that five-year period, the program has succeeded in offering NCRA-created free A to Z program sessions in conjunction with OCRA, which introduces steno machine writing to individuals wanting to explore a possible career in court reporting, closed captioning, CART captioning, or webcasting. The A to Z program can also be taken online through NCRA. To learn more about the online offering and/or get registered for a free online session, visit www.ncra.org/discoversteno.
The Clark State/Stark State program has also partnered with Project Steno, which promotes the stenographic court reporting/captioning profession through social media and community outreach, with the goal of building a robust pipeline of students into school and graduating them in two years. Project Steno relies exclusively on contributions from the court reporting community on a national level for its operations. The Project Steno partnership allows the Clark State/Stark State program to incentivize students with Project Steno’s one-year and two-year financial awards for meeting skill goals.
The National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) is the country’s leading organization representing stenographic court reporters, captioners, and legal videographers. NCRA promotes excellence among those who capture and convert the spoken word to text and is committed to supporting every member in achieving the highest level of professional expertise.
Robyn Hennigan, program coordinator and senior technical instructor at Clark State, along with Rene Eneix, department chair and associate professor at Stark State, look forward to offering the free JCR orientation webinar and being able to share the curriculum and the career pathways in this exciting career
Since receiving Project Steno approval in 2019, the Clark State/Stark State program has had multiple students that have received financial awards from Project Steno. Eneix said, “The incentive program has helped to motivate students to build their skill and meet the program speed requirements.”
Hennigan agreed and said, “With the demand being greater than the supply of these high-paying careers, the incentive program is important for the profession because students have even greater incentive to complete and start their profession.”
The skill required for court reporting and captioning entails learning to write a realtime theory on a stenographic writing machine at a minimum speed of 225 words per minute at a minimum of 95 percent accuracy to provide instantaneous translation of the spoken word, explained Professors Hennigan and Eneix. “This is an IT career with continuous learning at its foundation,” said Hennigan.
Hennigan and Eneix both said the field of realtime reporting is an exciting, vital, and rewarding career field. It offers a multitude of varying career opportunities. To learn more, join the virtual orientation webinar on February 10 at 6:30 p.m.
The Clark State/Stark State JCR degree provides the tools necessary to achieve success in an IT-related field of careers and opens doors to opportunities nationwide. Visit www.clarkstate.edu for additional information.