— Contact information for these and other references is available upon request —

I have worked with Sandy Grabowski for more than 10 years on a variety of publications that I edit, publish, or facilitate, and I cannot recommend her highly enough for her outstanding skills with a wide variety of materials and publication formats, her professionalism, and her willingness to go the extra mile for her clients. Since 1996 Sandy has taken a variety of materials and from them produced an attractive and compact quarterly Newsletter for the Association of Teachers of Japanese, as well as a series of other academic publications. Sandy has taken responsibility for the typography and design of all of these publications, has produced top-quality camera-ready copy for them, and has assisted with the production of our organization’s letterhead, reports and budgets, and countless other materials as well. This work is of top professional quality, and it helps us to present a highly polished image to the community of language teaching professionals around the country, as well as to the foundations and government agencies with which we work. Over the years, as the Association has relied more and more on its website to distribute materials and information, Sandy has moved with us to make the Newsletter an online as well as a print publication.

I have also worked with her on brochures, articles, and book-length publications in specialized fields ranging from microeconomics to sociolinguistics. Working in varying formats and with a number of languages (not all of which she speaks and reads, and some of which, like Japanese, do not use roman alphabets), Sandy uses a variety of software tools to supplement her considerable verbal and graphic skills. She seems to actually enjoy the challenge of taking materials that make mere editors throw up their hands in despair and turning them into an attractive printed publication or web document. She is an ideal collaborator, easy to communicate and work with and always willing to review, revise, and rework when it is necessary. I recommend her most highly as an editor and desktop publisher.
    S.S., Executive Director, Association of Teachers of Japanese

Over the past eight years, Sandy has transcribed nearly 200 interviews for me as part of three separate research projects. I can say without hesitation that there is absolutely no other transcriptionist that I would consider working with. I study the social impacts of disaster and have conducted in-depth interviews with Muslim Americans in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, parents and children displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and disaster relief providers. These interviews deal with sensitive topics, and Sandy has always approached the transcriptions with the utmost professionalism. Some of these interviews were conducted with from 5-15 participants, and Sandy not only managed to decipher what was being said, she accurately identified the different speakers. She has also transcribed interviews that I conducted with immigrants with heavy accents and persons from the Southern United States with strong regional dialects. Sandy goes above and beyond to ensure that she is spelling unfamiliar words correctly. Her intelligence and mastery of the English language shine through in her transcription work.

Sandy’s level of accuracy is incredible. The transcripts are beautifully organized and ready to use receipt, consistent in spelling and formatting of questions and responses. She makes me feel like a valued customer in every interaction. Every person who has worked with her has similar words of praise.
    L.P., Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins

Beginning in 2003, Sandy transcribed approximately 90 oral history interviews for a project being conducted by my program in collaboration with the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum about the history of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. I unequivocally recommend Sandy as an oral history interview transcriber. She is able to transcribe more quickly than any transcriber that I’ve ever known or even heard about, and yet she does not sacrifice accuracy to speed. Other excellent qualities she brings to the work include a prodigious intelligence and curiosity; a willingness and ability to conform to the client’s individual needs for formatting; a sophisticated approach to transcribing that allows her to set up systems so that names, acronyms, and other specialized terminology are used in a consistent manner; and a responsible work ethic (when she tells you she will have it done by a certain date, you can count on her). During the time that she worked with us, she helped us to write a transcription manual that not only is used by all the members of our program, but that other programs frequently use for guidance when setting up their own protocols.
    S.B., Program Manager, Maria Rogers Oral History Program, Boulder, Colorado

Although Sandy does work for a huge number of departments and individual faculty, I can personally attest that each and every one of us feels as though she works for us alone. Never does she suggest she is too busy to take on another project; never does she miss a deadline, no job is too small for her to apply her professional judgment and range of professional and technological capabilities to making it the best it can be. No project is too big for her to accept with enthusiasm. She consistently produces flawless brochures, Web pages, newsletters, grant proposals (she cheerfully helped me work against a very tight deadline to complete a lengthy proposal with numerous complex charts that I submitted to US DOE, for example), event flyers, book and article manuscripts of a quality that assures us they will be well-received by alumni, editors and publishers, grant committees, and knowledgeable readers in a wide range of fields. She makes us all look good, and she does it with a zest for her work and an enthusiasm that make her a delight to work with.
    L.R.R., Professor, Japanese, University of Colorado at Boulder

As an independent oral historian, I rely heavily on Sandy as a transcriptionist and sound editor. Always on-time and communicative, Sandy has demonstrated her versatility again and again by continuously producing excellent work despite the challenging accents and unknown multi-cultural themes presented in my interviews. Extremely experienced and well-versed in the area of oral history, Sandy tactfully and sensitively provides solicited advice on sound quality and transcription processes. Most amazingly, Sandy truly listens to what she is typing. As the only other individual exposed to my oral history research in-progress, I truly appreciate her willingness to explore and discuss the interviews themselves.
    J. A., Fulbright Scholar, El Salvador

I had heard of Sandy’s fine editing abilities, and when I realized that my oral history project for my research seminar needed a transcriptionist, I found that Sandy was astoundingly adept. The transcriptions were done in record time. The work was always complete, beautifully presented, and correct in all details. Sandy was also very welcoming to my students and me and gave positive feedback on the oral histories, which encouraged us in this project. In short, Sandy is a highly competent, attentive and concerned professional, who holds herself to the highest standards of this difficult kind of work.
    A.M.P., Professor, Women’s Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder

As an ethnographer and qualitative sociologist, I rely heavily on others to accurately transcribe audiotapes of my interviews. Sandy came highly recommended by numerous colleagues. Sandy’s professional reputation precedes her – it seems everyone knows to go to Sandy for products of THE highest quality. Having been at three different institutions of higher education, I can report, without reservation, that Sandy is by far the most highly skilled and diligent transcriber with whom I have ever had the pleasure of working. My assessment reflects not only her ability to type with incredible speed and accuracy, but perhaps, more importantly, the professional and enthusiastic manner in which she performs the tasks.

Sandy requires very little instruction. She knows exactly what to do and how to do it. Her organizational skills are formidable and invaluable, particularly for research projects with a great deal of data. Sandy goes beyond simple typing individual words and actually listens to the stories and the contexts of the interviews. The amount of care she puts into her work is evident in the consideration and patience Sandy provides in ensuring that the stories are recorded accurately. Many times, this is a difficult feat because many of my respondents are immigrants with heavy foreign accents or unusual sentence structures.

In my interactions with Sandy, it became apparent that she “knows” my research as well as I do. Subsequently, it means a great deal to me when she periodically emails me to tell me that she just completed an interview that she found particularly provocative or personally profound. I have found Sandy to be sincere in nature – if she says it, she means it. When she takes on a project, she is committed to providing her best and it shows. The finished products are always impressive and beyond expectations. And, I believe she is sincere when she says that she truly loves her work and approaches each project as a new learning opportunity.
    L.S.-H.P., Professor, Women’s Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder

As a doctoral student, I interviewed about 30 students and faculty. My dissertation committee co-chair told me about Sandy, who transcribed what amounted to nearly 500 transcription pages. But here’s the amazing part: her prices are reasonable and, because she knows a kind of interpretive shorthand, she could turn around one hour of interview—what usually takes four hours of transcription—in 24 hours. She is well organized, cues up jobs and gets them done, responds quickly by email, and even expressed enthusiasm in my dissertation topic. Also very useful, she knows APA formatting, which really helped me get the dissertation into “academic-speak.” I recommend her transcription, editing, and APA knowledge and services highly!
    C.M., Longmont, Colorado

As a person Sandy is not only an ardent learner of ever-changing and advancing computer technology but is current with a wide range of subjects of today’s world.
    K.T., Professor, Japanese/Linguistics, University of Colorado at Boulder

Sandy is a remarkable individual. She always exceeds requirements and expectations. She never misses a deadline. What is remarkable, however, is the fact that she truly and thoroughly enjoys her work. She is extremely artistic and creative. Each job she takes on seems to become a personal challenge for her. She believes in perfection, and she delivers it too.
    K.S., Senior Instructor, Japanese, University of Colorado at Boulder

Sandy is eager to be challenged with new and different assignments, and she completes them with the highest professional standards.
    H.T.E., Professor, Classics, University of Colorado at Boulder

Though she works for a number of departments and finds herself with multiple tasks and extraordinary time pressures, Sandy always remains enthusiastic and energetic with an uncompromising willingness to help; in every case her expertise makes a difficult task much easier.
    J.S., Program Assistant, East Asian Languages, University of Colorado at Boulder

Sandy does a superb job with even the most complicated and lengthy projects. She has a complete and easy mastery of the sophisticated machinery she operates, with the additional and crucial advantage of a perfect knowledge of German and French. Sandy undertakes all projects promptly, completes them expeditiously, makes virtually no mistakes, and is invariably polite, considerate and attentive.
    E.F., Professor, Classics, University of Colorado at Boulder

Sandy always performed diligently, graciously and tactfully; it was a pleasure to work with her. She showed ingenuity, inventiveness, humour and perfect taste, as well as impeccable scholarship in her handling of footnotes and bibliographical references.
    J.B., Professor, French, University of Colorado at Boulder

— Contact information for these and other references is available upon request —