KCRA PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Convention 2022 and Student Opportunities

03/31/2022

Happy Spring, everyone!

I hope you’re all doing fantastic and keeping your head above water.  I know it’s been difficult for just about all of us with the case backlogs everywhere.

I’ve come to share some news and announcements with you.  First and foremost, our 2022 in-person convention is getting closer by the day.  We have some exciting speakers lined up so far.  A little preview of some of our seminars are as follows:  Q&A with the Kansas Appellate Court; self-defense training with Desiree Wright; what attorneys really learned in law school versus what we think they learned, presented by a panel of attorneys and maybe a judge or two; and our keynote speaker, Traci Brown, presenting her “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” seminar.  Traci was recently ranked the #5 body language expert in the world. Did I mention she is also a best-selling author and producing and directing her own television mini-series about liars in Hollywood right now?  Needless to say, I’m very excited about this seminar!! Please watch a preview of Traci’s seminar and what you can expect to gain here.  Traci Brown, CSP Fraud Busting Body Language Expert and Keynote Speaker 2022 Live and Virtual Demo - YouTube. 

As a reminder, our convention is scheduled to be held on Friday, October 21^st, and Saturday, October 22^nd, 2022, at The Oread Hotel in Lawrence.  If you haven’t marked your calendars yet, go ahead and get that date saved!  Our board is very excited to have all of us meet in person this year again, finally.  It sure does seem like it’s been forever.

Secondly, as you may have seen on Facebook, the Kansas Department of Labor is really trying to incorporate court reporting programs into their apprenticeship program.  The final approval is still pending, but the paperwork is in and we don’t expect there to be any hiccups in the approval process.  OJA is working on their end to formulate a farm system, for lack of a better term, to get students working in our district courts as transcriptionists and doing on-the-job training while they’re in school, with the ultimate goal of hiring that student upon completion of school and passage of the CCR and/or national exam.  OJA will be presenting this to the Court Records Committee and CCR board at their next meeting in April.  This is an opportunity for both steno and voice students and KDOL will pay $2,000 of the student’s tuition.  I know we have Metropolitan Court Reporters on board to take a student, but if there are any other freelance firms out there that would be willing to take on a student in this capacity as well, please reach out to me at Miranda.cummings@kscourts.org and let me know.  If you’re in a district that you believe could benefit from this program, please let me know as well so I can reach out to the appropriate people in charge of your district.  Student placement will obviously be determined by their physical location.   

For now, that’s all I have.  I can’t wait to see everyone in October!  Take care of yourselves.

Miranda Cummings, CVR, CCR

KCRA Board President 2019-2022

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