Lake Land College introduces Court Reporting Degree Program

For Immediate Release – February 22, 2021

The Court Reporting Technology Degree program is a new special admission program at Lake Land College beginning Fall 2021. The introduction of the program follows the increased high demand for court reporting and closed-captioning professionals throughout the nation.

Lake Land College business faculty worked closely with area court reporters to create the degree program, which will train students for careers in the judicial setting as either official or freelance court reporters. The program also provides students with the option to attain a captioning specialization, which prepares students for careers providing captioning for broadcast television and internet programs and working with the deaf or hard-of-hearing population by providing an accurate word-for-word text translation in education, civic and corporate settings.

Lake Land College will be hosting a virtual information session for this program March 17. Instructors for the program will be available to answer questions, and all are welcome to attend. To register, visit lakelandcollege.edu/visit/.

Program application requirements include admission to Lake Land College and completion of an interest survey, English and grammar exam and a timed typing exam. In addition, prospective students with any court reporting coursework or Lake Land College coursework are asked to provide documentation or college transcripts. Special admission testing will be open March 22 through April 23, 2021 for consideration for the fall semester. Court Reporting is a competitive, special admission program with an availability of 17 incoming students this fall semester.

To get started with the special admission process, those interested must complete a Laker Profile at https://www.lakelandcollege.edu/enroll/ and submit an intent to enroll at Lake Land College indicating the Academic Program (major) as “AAS.CRT.TRK”. By selecting this option, the student will be contacted to complete the Special Admission Testing and Screening Canvas course.

Interested students may begin the program with a typing speed of 40-50 words per minute. Keeping up with the pace of regular speech, the program is designed to train students on a specialized 24-key shorthand keyboard used by court reporters and captioners called a steno machine. Rather than typing out each word, letter for letter, as on a traditional keyboard, stenographers spell out syllables phonetically on a steno machine. This form of specialized shorthand allows court reporters and captioners to capture speech with near complete accuracy.

Students will purchase or rent-to-own a steno machine.

All classes are available online but many will offer a virtual component where students can attend Zoom sessions. If a student cannot acquire the appropriate speed in time, the student can retake the half credit hour lab. Additionally, if a student does not have confident keyboarding skills prior to acceptance into the program, keyboarding skill building courses such as Keyboarding, Advanced Formatting and Processing Information can be taken.

The final semester of the program, students will complete a one-hour internship course where students will be placed in courtrooms or in the deposition setting under supervision of a court reporter.

Upon graduation, students will be prepared to sit for the Illinois Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) or the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA), Registered Skilled Reporter (RSR) and Registered Professional Reporter (RPR) certification exams.

For more information about the special admission Court Reporting Technology Degree program, contact Lisa Earp, business instructor/program coordinator office professionals, at learp@lakelandcollege.edu.