diff --git a/src/llmcompressor/transformers/finetune/text_generation.py b/src/llmcompressor/transformers/finetune/text_generation.py
index 61e6441bb..a01b990a9 100644
--- a/src/llmcompressor/transformers/finetune/text_generation.py
+++ b/src/llmcompressor/transformers/finetune/text_generation.py
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@
 import os
 import warnings
 from pathlib import PosixPath
+from typing import Optional
 
 from loguru import logger
 from transformers import (
@@ -51,7 +52,7 @@
     patch_tied_tensors_bug,
 )
 from llmcompressor.transformers.sparsification.sparse_model import (
-    get_shared_processor_src,
+    get_processor_name_from_model,
 )
 from llmcompressor.transformers.utils.helpers import (
     detect_last_checkpoint,
@@ -257,10 +258,13 @@ def initialize_model_from_path(
 
 
 def initialize_processor_from_path(
-    model_args: ModelArguments, model: PreTrainedModel, teacher: PreTrainedModel
+    model_args: ModelArguments,
+    model: PreTrainedModel,
+    teacher: Optional[PreTrainedModel] = None,
 ) -> Processor:
-    processor_src = model_args.processor
-    processor_src = processor_src or get_shared_processor_src(model, teacher)
+    processor_src = model_args.processor or get_processor_name_from_model(
+        model, teacher
+    )
     # The use_fast=True option is not currently supported safely in Transformers
     # See: https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/pull/34836#issuecomment-2491809727  # noqa: E501
     try:
diff --git a/src/llmcompressor/transformers/sparsification/sparse_model.py b/src/llmcompressor/transformers/sparsification/sparse_model.py
index d7abc323a..74e7666db 100644
--- a/src/llmcompressor/transformers/sparsification/sparse_model.py
+++ b/src/llmcompressor/transformers/sparsification/sparse_model.py
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 
 __all__ = [
     "SparseAutoModelForCausalLM",
-    "get_shared_processor_src",
+    "get_processor_name_from_model",
 ]
 
 
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ def from_pretrained(*args, **kwargs):
         return AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(*args, **kwargs)
 
 
-def get_shared_processor_src(student: Module, teacher: Optional[Module]) -> str:
+def get_processor_name_from_model(student: Module, teacher: Optional[Module]) -> str:
     """
     Get a processor/tokenizer source used for both student and teacher, assuming
     that they could be shared