CATIE Center
Meet the CATIE Center Staff
Paula Gajewski-Mickelson, Richard Laurion, Laurie Swabey and Rosa Ramirez
Laurie Swabey, Ph.D., CSC., Principal Investigator
Dr. Swabey was previously the Project Director of the RSA Region V Grant Project at the College of St. Catherine. She serves as the ALS/Interpreting Department Chair and Associate Professor of the B.A. program in Interpreting at CSC and has taught interpreting for 25 years. Before moving to MN in 1990, Dr. Swabey was the Director of the RSA Grant Project at Merrimack Valley College/University of NH from 1982 – 1990 (serving ME, NH, RI and VT). She has had 13 years of successfully managing RSA grant projects. Dr. Swabey has served on the board of the Conference of Interpreter Trainers (CIT) for 3 terms and worked on the early development of the CIT accreditation process. She developed the curriculum in medical interpreting for the University of Minnesota and for the NY Task Force on Immigrant Health, and has taught interpreting theory to interpreters of Russian, Spanish, Khmer, Hmong, Vietnamese and Somali languages. She currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the National Council for Interpreting in Health Care. She has presented at numerous conferences including: RID, CIT, AVLIC and all four of the international Critical Link conferences, held in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Stockholm. Dr. Swabey developed the bachelor’s degree program in Interpreting for the University of NH in 1988 and was instrumental in the transition from the associate degree to the bachelor’s degree, both at UNH and at CSC. Her Ph.D. is in Linguistics from the University of Minnesota, where her dissertation focused on the use of referring expressions in ASL and English, due to the difficulties second language learners of ASL often have with pronouns. She recently had a chapter published in Advances in Teaching Sign Language Interpreters (Roy, 2005) on teaching students to understand pronouns and other forms of reference more effectively.
As project director for the CATIE Center, Dr. Swabey oversees all aspects of the project, ensuring collaboration and non-duplication of services with the other four Regional Centers and the National Center, working on the domains and competencies project for medical interpreting, and providing information/resources to the interpreter education programs in the region regarding up-to-date practices.
Richard Laurion, CI & CT, NIC Advanced, External Liaison and Project Manager
Mr. Laurion has a B.A. in Organizational Management from Concordia University, and is pursuing a master's degree in Organizational Leadership. He has 30 years of experience managing services in education, government agencies, and businesses. Mr. Laurion has been interpreting since 1983 and has been mentoring and teaching interpreters since 1988. He has been a leader on the local and national level, serving 6 years on the Minnesota RID Board and 8 years on the national RID Board. At RID, he helped to develop the Certification Maintenance Program and the Generalist Written Test. Much of his work career has been focused on the needs of interpreters living in rural or remote areas. Mr. Laurion formerly served as the programming co-manager for the RSA Region V, Interpreter Education Grant Project. Much of this work has focused on building innovative and creative products, programs and resources for interpreter skill development, including training for interpreters on new technologies, specifically VRI and VRS.
Mr. Laurion currently serves as External Liaison and Project Manager for the CATIE Center, devoting his time to developing and managing relationships with the local partners. In addition, he is actively involved in collaborative workteams of the National Consortium, including Deaf Advocacy Training, Legal Interpreting, VRS/VRI Interpreting, PR/Marketing, Medical Interpreting, DeafBlind Interpreting, Mental Health Interpreting, Website/Internet Technology and Diagnostics. Mr. Laurion has demonstrated an outstanding ability to work with agencies, organizations, colleges and other entities serving consumers and interpreters.
Paula Gajewski, CI & CT and NIC Advanced, Mentoring Coordinator
Ms. Gajewski holds a B.A. degree in Human Service Administration/Human Resource Development, and a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership. She is currently a faculty member in the Interpreting department at the College of St. Catherine and previously served as co-manager for the RSA Region V Interpreter Education Project at CSC. Ms. Gajewski has been a partner in SLICES, an agency that has specialized in creating customized educational seminars and activities. Throughout her 22-year career in the interpreting field she has worked with interpreters in rural and urban areas across the country as a presenter, mentor and consultant specializing in mentoring, ethical decision-making, problem solving, mentoring and professional development planning. She has written and coordinated several grant projects, including the development of the MRID Self-Paced Modules for Educational Interpreter Skill Development. Ms. Gajewski was the lead developer for the Midwest Mentorship Retreat and currently sits on the Advisory Board for the CSD Mentoring Program. She leads the National Consortium's workteam on mentoring, and schedules RID testing at the CATIE Center.
Rosa Ramirez, Communications Coordinator and Budget Manager
Ms. Ramirez has a B.A. in English and Chicano Studies and over 17 years of experience in communications, accounting and event coordination. Her experience working with interpreters began as a hard of hearing consumer, and expanded when she joined the RSA Region V Interpreter Education Grant Project at CSC in 2002 as the administrative assistant. Under the current grant, Ms. Ramirez oversees the communication and coordination of the grant project, connects interpreters and educators with the resources available from all the projects, maintains the website and other communications, coordinates continuing education unit processing with RID, and oversees the program budget. Ms. Ramirez is actively involved in the Deaf Advocacy Training and PR workteams of the National Consortium.
Margaret Montgomery, CATIE Center Assistant
Ms. Montgomery manages data input for evaluations, maintains our contact databases, processes orders and registrations for workshops, and responds to inquiries, in addition to providing all kinds of office support. She has served as support staff at the RID Region III Conference in 2006, SSP at the AADB National Conference in 2006, and attended the RID national conference in 2007. Ms. Montgomery holds a degree in Visual Arts and ASL Studies, and is currently pursuing her degree in Interpreting at the College of St. Catherine. She also tutors ASL students at the College of St. Catherine.
Andrea Olson, Ph.D., Evaluator
Dr. Olson earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota. The focus of her degree was Industrial/Organizational Psychology with a supporting program in Counseling Psychology. Dr. Olson is an assistant professor in the Psychology Department at the College of St. Catherine where she teaches Statistical Methods in Psychology, General Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and a core College course. She also conducts research, supervises student researchers and mentors students who conduct independent research projects. Before joining the College, Dr. Olson served as a consultant at a management-consulting firm and as a research analyst for a large survey research company. At the College, she has served as an evaluator for seven projects, which have varied in scope and complexity.
Dr. Olson coordinates evaluation efforts, working with CATIE Center and the National Consortium. She develops evaluation plans in collaboration with project team members, assists in identifying evaluation criteria, develops evaluation surveys and data collection methods, collects and analyzes quantitative and qualitative data, interprets evaluation data, integrate and summarizes results in written reports and meets regularly with CATIE Center and the National Consortium to communicate updated evaluation work and results.