The National Court Reporters Association, the countrycountry’s leading organization representing stenographic court reporters and broadcast captioners, has announced that February 17-23 has been deemed National Court Reporting and Captioning Week. The awareness week pulls together a nationwide effort to highlight the contributions of stenographic court reporters and captioners to society and to showcase the career opportunities that exist in the court reporting and captioning fields.

STAUTZENBERGER COLLEGE, a premier court reporting education program based in Maumee, Ohio, is planning to encourage our student population to get involved with National Court Reporting and Captioning Week by engaging in a grassroots effort to promote the profession and educate local communities about the value stenographic skills bring to today’s marketplace.

“As highly technical career options, stenographic court reporting and captioning require an intricate blend of skill and knowledge,” said Tami Smith, president of NCRA and a court reporter for the 37th Circuit Court in Battle Creek, Mich. “National Court Reporting and Captioning Week not only celebrates and highlights the invaluable contributions that court reporters make to the legal and deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, it also showcases the tremendous career opportunities that are available through stenographic court reporting and captioning.”

National Court Reporting and Captioning Week will be marked with promotional events and marketing nationwide, including a grassroots social media campaign, presentations at high schools across the country about court reporting and captioning career opportunities and community demonstrations such as producing transcripts of veterans’ oral histories. “For 10 years, members of the National Court Reporters Association have volunteered their time and professional skills to capture the oral histories of America’s disabled veterans,” said B.J. Shorak, deputy executive director of the National Court Reporters Foundation. “These transcripts—thousands of important histories that would have otherwise been lost—are preserved at the Library of Congress thanks to the skill and dedication of court reporters and captioners.”

Stenographic skills translate to a multitude of career options—including court reporting, live-event captioning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, captioning for broadcast and specialized videography—and the strong marketplace demand means court reporting offers an abundance of long-term career opportunities. “Court reporting is consistently ranked as one of the top career options as it offers both flexibility and significant income potential,” notes Joan Rohlman, CRI, Stenography Programs Coordinator. “Court reporters and captioners are able to begin a career without a traditional four-year college degree, and these highly trained professionals experience the continuous professional growth associated with an in-demand career.”

For more information, visit www.sctoday.edu or NCRA.org. Career information about the court reporting profession—one of the leading career options that do not require a four-year degree—can be found at CareersInCourtReporting.com.

Stautzenberger College offers a part-time day and evening Court Reporting Program, along with a Broadcast Captioning Program, offering an Associate’s Degree in these fields. Our mission is to have the students in schools and people that want to change their careers know that court reporting is one of the best career options out there with an expected growth of more than 5 percent in the coming years. We want to reassure the attorneys that using a court reporter is still number one for taking down a verbatim record. Our technology exceeds anything out there. To learn more of the Court Reporting and Broadcast Captioning programs at Stautzenberger College, contact Amanda Boyd, Director of Admissions at 419.866.0261, Extension 138, or go to the school’s website at www.sctoday.edu.

About NCRA
The National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) is internationally recognized for promoting excellence among those who capture and convert the spoken word to text for more than 100 years. NCRA is committed to supporting its more than 19,000 members in achieving the highest level of professional expertise with educational opportunities and industry-recognized court reporting, educator and videographer certification programs. NCRA impacts legislative issues and the global marketplace through its actively involved membership. Forbes has named court reporting as one of the best career options that do not require a four-year degree and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the court reporting field is expected to grow more than 5 percent in the coming years. For more information, visit NCRA.org.