Training Qualified IEP Interpreters (TQII, pronounced "tiki") is a project funded by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and housed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The aim of the project is to develop a training program for interpreters to serve in Illinois public schools during individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings with families who do not feel comfortable conversing in English. Experts at the University of Illinois have developed language proficiency tests and training modules in Special Education and in Interpreting to meet this need for the state.
Professor Kiel Christianson (Ph.D. 2004, Linguistics & Cognitive Science, Michigan State University) is Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, with additional affiliations in the Departments of Linguistics and Psychology. He also directs the Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE) Doctoral Concentration Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and co-directs the Illinois Language and Literacy Initiative at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. His research in psycholinguistics, reading, and bilingualism has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Sandia National Labs, the Confucius Institute and private industry.
Xun Yan is a professor of Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education, and Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is a faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. At UIUC, Xun is the director of the undergraduate program in Linguistics + TESOL and the supervisor of the English Placement Test and the Oral English Assessment Interview. Xun's research interests include speaking and writing assessment, psycholinguistic and computational approaches to language testing, and language assessment literacy. His work has been published in journals including Language Testing, Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, TESOL Quarterly, Assessing Writing, System, and Journal of Second Language Writing.
Joyce Tolliver (PhD, University of Southern California) is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She was Director of the Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) from 2016 to 2024. She currently holds an affiliate faculty appointment in TIS, as well as in the Center for Global Studies, European Union Center, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Department of Gender and Women's Studies. Her research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish and Philippine literatures and cultures, with a special emphasis on translation, gender, and sexuality studies.
Reynaldo Pagura has an M.A. in Applied Linguistic/Language Acquisition from Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, and a Ph.D. in the Translation Studies track of the English Language Linguistics and Literatures from the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. He has worked as a conference interpreter since 1990, became a Certified Translator (English>Portuguese) by the American Translators Association (ATA) in 1991, of which he is an active member. He has also worked as a Court Interpreter in Brazil and in the State of Utah and has been an interpreter trainer since 1998. He has been teaching the interpreting courses in the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2018. He has published on interpreter training in Brazil, United States, Argentina, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, and Spain.
Sophie Ben Menni Schuler (M.A. Conference Interpreting, Universitat Heidelberg; B.A. Translation and Interpreting Studies, Universidad de Granada) is an instructor in the Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has worked as a translator and an interpreter in both community and conference interpreting. She has been a language teacher (Spanish, German, English) since 2013. She has been teaching at UIUC since 2022, the year she was awarded a full-year scholarship from DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service, to teach in the Department for Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Ozum Arzik-Erzurumlu is the author of Reimagining Conference Interpreting in the Age of AI (Routledge). She is a Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. Prior to joining Illinois, she was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2022-2024) and held faculty positions at Bahcesehir and Atlas University in Istanbul as Assistant and Associate Professor. Her work has appeared in leading journals such as Translation and Interpreting Studies, Interpreting, and Perspectives. She is also an accredited professional conference interpreter with Turkish (A), English (B), and Spanish (C).
Flavia Brown is a Spanish-English interpreter with a strong focus on educational, legal, and community settings. She holds a master's degree in Spanish Literature and TESOL and is currently completing a Master of Arts in Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, specializing in both Translation for the Professions and Interpreting. Flavia works as a Spanish-English court interpreter and is a Certified IEP Interpreter; with extensive experience as a Spanish and English language teacher. Her professional interests center on interpreter ethics, accuracy, plain-language reformulation, and culturally responsive communication to ensure equitable access to essential services.
Natalie Grewe is the Project Coordinator for the TQII program. Natalie has been with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2019. She holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish from Illinois State University and an MBA with a focus in healthcare and research from St. Francis University.