Page 60 - Fall 2006

Brigham Young University (BYU). The San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles chapters are somewhat active in southern California, but this figure shows that the chapter- less San Francisco/San Jose area has the potential for chapter activities.
Knowledge of the region’s population size and density is also helpful in tempering the expectations when counting the attendees in a chapter meeting. A good rule-of-thumb of involvement in chapter activities is to count on about 10% to 20% of the local ASA member population to attend the first chapter meeting.
After a long time of inactivity, the first chapter meeting tends to attract the most attendance. ASA members in the Metropolitan New York Chapter region and the Washington DC Chapter region have revitalized their Chapters with great success. It is very rewarding to receive comments of gratitude from attendees thanking the organizers for moving the chap- ter forward.
Presently, this study has been limited to US membership. However, the CRC also welcomes additional professional and student chapters from other countries.
Developing a sustainable Regional Chapter
Once the chapter is formed and the first meetings have been conducted, the next step of a good leader is to ensure that the chapter is sustainable. The leadership of the chapter can accomplish this by giving others the opportunity to pre- pare for and conduct a meeting with supervision. After a suc- cessful meeting, the leader should celebrate the accomplish- ment and let everyone in the team know that, in fact, the col- lective efforts contributed to this success.
To build the leadership among the active members, the proven leader should step aside and allow those interested to take on the responsibilities of leadership positions. Holding office for more than a couple of years in the same executive position is too long and the chapter may risk becoming stag- nant. For example, when the chapter chair becomes the past- chair he or she can step aside and offer guidance to the fol- lowing leadership. The new chair should have a vision to direct the chapter, be able to share this vision to the team and motivate them to increase member involvement.
A yearly officers meeting is paramount to regroup and discuss the status of the chapter and where to go from there. A new chapter may start with just a handful of technical meetings in a year. Depending on the feedback of meeting attendees, they may want to add other activities such as tours or school visits. The chapter may benefit by assigning a coor- dinator responsible for each event.
Always try something new even if it feels risky. If the idea does not achieve the intended objective, then learn why and perhaps try a different approach or just move-on to entertain other ideas. Otherwise, the meetings may become overly rou- tine and chapter attendance may dwindle until officers become discouraged and the chapter becomes suited for deactivation. Encourage variety to maintain the value of the chapter to its members.
Diversifying the talks also contributes to interesting meet- ings. Invite talks from as many fields of acoustics as possible keeping in mind the preferences of the chapter members.
Invite speakers from industry, government, and academia to offer a wide range of perspectives. Avoid inviting too many speakers from the same organizations. Inviting women and minorities to add to the diversity of the speakers would likely attract attendees from those same groups. Hold some meetings at universities to attract students, but move to restaurants and other venues during the summer since students are more like- ly to be at the beach at that time of the year.
Some chapters value their interactions with other profes- sional societies and they assign people to serve as liaisons to the other societies such as the American Physical Society (APS) or the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Increased attendance is possible by coordinating joint meetings with Regional Chapters from other profes- sional societies with common interests. Members from the co-hosting society may become interested in joining the ASA chapter. Joint meetings with another ASA Regional Chapter are also possible where the meeting can be held at a venue half way between the areas covered by the chapters. For example, the North Carolina and Washington DC chapters conducted a joint two-day meeting at Hampton, VA. The Narragansett and Boston Regional Chapters have also held joint meetings. Joint meetings also allow the chapters to learn from each other.
Something different may include coordinating a “dou- ble-feature” with two invited speakers from two different fields of acoustics. Perhaps a meeting featuring university students where each gets 15 minutes to talk about their research topics. This would be a great opportunity to provide constructive feedback and to videotape their talks so that they can see for themselves how well they did and where they should make improvements. If the meetings are videotaped, consider making them available at a nominal fee to members who really wanted to listen to the talk but were unable to attend.
Selecting good speakers requires some research. The program of the ASA national meetings is a source of valuable information. Just take a few moments to look through the lat- est program to search for speakers with addresses within your chapter’s area. These speakers could easily deliver the same talk at a chapter meeting with little need for additional preparation. If the chapter liaison or any officer has the opportunity to attend the national meeting, it would take just a few minutes to assess the quality of the talk before inviting the speaker to deliver that same talk at a chapter meeting. Also the chapter’s honorarium may be used to invite a promi- nent speaker from out of town that may draw attendance.
It also may be important to cater to the speaker prefer- ences of the regional areas. The authors analyzed the statistics connected with each state and found that there seemed to be a predominance of member interest that is unique for each. The primary field of interest in California is noise control, while Massachusetts is dominated by psychological and physiological acoustics, New York focuses on speech com- munication, Maryland on underwater acoustics, and Pennsylvania is equally dominated by physical acoustics and noise control. Illinois dominates in architectural acoustics but has no interest in ultrasound. Hawaii is mainly interested in animal bioacoustics. Also, a whopping 63% of Mississippi’s
58 Acoustics Today, October 2006