Brenda Schick picture
Professor Emerita

Dr. Schick studies the development of signed and spoken languages as well as its relationship to cognition in deaf children. Her recent work has focused on the development of a Theory of Mind in deaf children and how it relates to language skills. Her work, with colleagues, shows that complex language skills are essential for the development of skills in social cogntiion. Currently, with colleagues from the University of Washington, she is working on a tool to assess Quality of Life in students with a hearing loss, funded by NIH. Dr. Schick is the co-developer of the Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA), a tool designed to evaluate the skills of K-12 interpreters. With colleagues, she has published data on the performance skills of interpreters who work in the K-12 setting. She is also the developer of the EIPA Written Test and the website dedicated to K-12 interpreting, www.classroominterpreting.org . She is the co-developer of a sign language curriculum designed for parents, Sign With Me, as well as a series of children's books that have been translated into ASL by deaf adults and children, Read With Me. She has served as the school board president for Rocky Mountain Deaf School, a bilingual charter school for deaf children in metro Denver. She was a classroom teacher for deaf children. In addition, she is a CODA, having grown up in a deaf family.