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members of the ASA see standards work as tedious and not very useful to them. However, our product manufacturers and service providers rely heavily on standards. Thus, to serve our membership we must include standards activity and assume a leadership role in the promulgation of stan- dards related to acoustics.
A second important characteristic of acoustics is that it is generally a topic found in classes only at the graduate level. In this sense acoustics is like optics—both are graduate degree programs. However, unlike optics, which is normally men- tioned (at least superficially) in required undergraduate physics and engineering courses, acoustics is rarely included in the core curriculum of any undergraduate major today. It is this lack of exposure to a wide swath of students that poses our greatest obstacle to the recruitment of students into the acoustics profession. At a minimum, it suggests that we need to create popular elective courses in acoustics to reach a wide student base.
While there are certainly a number of academic institu- tions that offer elective courses in acoustics, these tend to be focused on upper level undergraduates at the junior or senior level in science and engineering degree programs. Most often, a given institution has only a single such elective course, mak- ing it difficult for the interested student to pursue the topic fur- ther via a minor or concentration in acoustics. Additionally, because the elective might be taken in the senior year, it is often too late to have an impact on graduate school selection. An alternative to this approach is to offer an early elective course on acoustics that is intended to capture the imagina- tion, and a later elective course that goes into greater technical depth. This sort of approach has been used very successfully at Tufts University, which introduced a series of freshman cours- es open to all students but focusing on technology with an aim of recruiting students to engineering. For instance, a freshman course called Gourmet Engineering is very popular and intro- duces students to the concepts of heat transfer and microwaves via a focus on cooking. These courses were found to result in a net flux of students into engineering, contrary to the more common problem of high student attrition from engineering. An example of the sort of acoustics course that might be offered early in a college career is offered at the University of Rochester. There, a freshman course called the Physics of Music has been a staple for decades (and was responsible for one of the authors choosing to pursue acoustics professional- ly). In a recent form, the students not only learned elementary physical properties of sound, but also made polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-pipe flutes that they used to perform original music that a student wrote for the PVC flute choir while in the class.
A third characteristic of acoustics is that there is a clear set of common products and manufacturers associated with the field. While this does not uniquely define acoustics, it does set it apart from particle physics, for instance. Common products that are entirely or primarily acoustical in function include musical instruments, microphones and loudspeak- ers, MP3 players, hearing aids, and all manner of telecom- munication equipment. In particular, for college-age people, we have become a society obsessed with music. Where a mere decade ago .wav files were the purview of acousticians,
they are now the common domain of students downloading music onto MP3 players, cell phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers. The proliferation of portable personal listening devices provides acoustics with a new tool for attracting students to the profession, although we have been slow to make use of the opportunity.
A fourth characteristic of acoustics is that it affects our daily lives, especially in our urban centers where the high den- sity of people leads to greater intrusion of transportation and activity noise into homes. Daily exposure to high noise levels where we live and work alters both physical and mental atti- tudes and contributes to an overall reduction in the quality of life. Many urban dwellers are not even aware of their contribu- tion to the problem, and building construction often ignores the need for improved isolation and separation.
The four characteristics of acoustics discussed above provide a context for thinking about how to make the profes- sion more attractive to students. This leads to a number of questions such as the following: Are we offering undergrad- uate courses in acoustics that provide a glimpse of the breadth of the field and the wide range of job opportunities available? Are we providing enough chances for students to connect with acoustics before they need to make choices about jobs or graduate school? How can we take advantage of the plethora of common acoustics products and, in particu- lar, the comfort level of students with music files on comput- ers to engage students in acoustics?
In the following sections of this article we consider these questions and others that are similar by focusing on the ele- ments of classes in acoustics—texts, applications, hands-on experiences, pedagogical techniques, and issues of diversity. We then conclude with a game plan for creating an environment that encourages students to consider a profession in acoustics.
Acoustics textbooks
The textbook chosen for a class is very important because students generally expect instructors to follow the chosen text closely. This is not simply a matter of preference. Tightly cou- pling classroom activities with the textbook and assignments tends to produce a class that enables students with a wide vari- ety of learning styles to flourish and that reinforces learning. Some students do well, for instance, in reading the text before the class to prepare questions, while others intentionally read related text material after a class period to gain a broader per- spective on the topic covered. Some, alas, do not read the assigned textbook at all and a significant fraction of these stu- dents perform well in the class nonetheless.
Because there is a limited number of acoustics courses, and the field is modest in size, the market for textbooks on acoustics is fairly small. Nonetheless, there are a number of textbooks on acoustics suitable for undergraduate use. These texts tend to segregate into two classes: those focused nar- rowly (as for instance books on speech or noise control) and those meant to be an introductory survey. Among the books designed to present a survey of acoustics, it is striking how similar each is to the others in terms of material coverage and order of presentation. While it is easy to see how this might result naturally from writing a book based on one’s experi-
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