Keeping a university translation program in step with industry

The challenge

Academic translation and interpreting programs face a hard, structural problem: the language industry moves faster than curriculum does. Tooling, workflows, client expectations, and pricing shift year to year, and the recent acceleration of machine translation and AI has only widened the gap.

Faculty are experts in their disciplines, but they can't easily track the day-to-day realities of a working translator or a language service provider. Program reviews and accreditation cycles are slow by design. The result is a familiar risk: graduates who are strong scholars but under-prepared for how the work is really done. An outside industry voice helps close that gap — not by dictating what a program should teach, but by giving faculty a reliable, current read on where the industry is heading so they can make informed choices.

What I did

My role with UVU has been an ongoing engagement rather than a one-off consultation. The centerpiece was helping Dr. Gilbert form a language-industry advisory board — a standing group of working professionals who review the T&I program and make recommendations to keep it current.

Around that board, I've stayed connected to the program in more direct ways: I've been a repeat guest lecturer in Devin's translation courses, bringing real project examples and current industry practice into the classroom, and I've participated in UVU's annual Language Industry Day. Devin and I have also taken this work to the wider field, co-presenting at two national conferences — "How a Language Industry Board Helps Utah Valley University Orient its Translation and Interpreting Program's Priorities" at the ATA 65th Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon (November 2024), and "Applying Agile Development to Translation Curriculum Renewal in Higher Education" at NextGen 2023 in Monterey, California.

The approach

What made this work wasn't a single deliverable; it was a way of working. We treated curriculum renewal as iterative rather than monolithic — reviewing in focused cycles, testing changes, and adjusting — an approach we've described as borrowing from "agile" development in software. That kept the program improving continuously instead of waiting for a large, infrequent overhaul.

Just as important, the work is collaborative by design. My job is to connect faculty to working professionals and to ground academic priorities in real industry needs, not to hand down verdicts. Devin knows his students, his institution, and the pedagogy; I bring the industry lens. The recommendations that come out of the board carry weight precisely because they're a genuine meeting of both.

Results & impact

Curriculum guidance:

• Reviewed program learning objectives for one minor and two certificates.
• Advised the creation of a career-exploration, guest-speaker course for students.
• Helped generate ideas to modify activities, modules, projects, and lessons across four courses.

Student impact — from UVU course evaluations:

Wider results:

• Two national conference presentations (ATA 2024; NextGen 2023) sharing UVU's model with the wider field.
• Dr. Gilbert was named his department's Faculty of the Year for 2025–26.

Why it matters

Programs don't need to guess where the industry is going, and they don't need to rebuild a curriculum from scratch to stay current. With the right outside partner, faculty can make steady, well-informed adjustments — and keep ownership of every decision. That's the service this partnership models: a durable bridge between the classroom and the working language industry, built on collaboration rather than prescription.