Page 26 - October 2010

WOMEN IN ACOUSTICS: YESTERDAY AND TODAY
Marcia J. Isakson
Applied Research Laboratories, University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78758
Women have been a part of the
Acoustical Society of America
(ASA) from its inception. Of
the 450 charter members of the society
in 1929, at least one, Dr. M. Katherine
Frehafer, was female. Dr. Frehafer
received her Ph.D. in physics from
Johns Hopkins University in 1919 at a
time when few women were pursuing
natural science degrees. She was prima-
rily interested in spectroscopy and was the second doctor- ate level female at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST). Dr. Frehafer was a professor of physics at Goucher College from 1925-1952.
Women became more involved in the society as the number of women in science and engineering grew. However, even by 1973, the first year statistics were calculat- ed, women comprised a mere 4% of the society membership. One of the pioneers for women in acoustics was Dr. Katherine Harris. Joining the society in 1954, Dr. Harris became the first female recipient of the Gold Medal, the high- est honor that the society bestows. Dr. Harris not only pio- neered electromyography (EMG) to study the dynamics of motor control in speech production, she also mentored many students in her roles in academia and research. Dr. Harris provided an invaluable role model for the special challenges of female researchers.
Today there are nearly 1200 female members of the soci- ety making strides in all areas. One of these researchers is Dr. Lily Wang from the Architectural Engineering Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Attracted to acoustics through a love of music, Dr. Wang initially entered the field with a desire to design concert halls. She now studies the
“In mechanical engineering, a field that includes many acousticians, women comprise a mere 6.7% of the workforce.”
effect of noise on performance and per- ception in the workplace. Dr. Wang and her team discovered that noises that were perceived to be rumbly generally produced lower performance on typing and math/reasoning tasks. She and her student, Lauren Ronsse, have recently begun to apply these results to the class- room. They have found that higher background noise levels in classrooms
are correlated to lower elementary school student achieve- ment scores on reading comprehension tests.
Women are involved in all scales of acoustic research from the mechanics of the tiny inner ear to propagation in the largest oceans. One of the largest scale acoustics tests to date was conducted in part by researcher, Dr. Lora Van Ufflen. In this test, designed to study acoustic tomography in the ocean, the source and receiver were as much as 640 km apart. Although Dr. Van Ufflen has only recently completed her Ph.D., she has already taken part in 17 sea cruises from the Arctic to the Southern Ocean. Her main interest is shad- ow zone arrivals, mysterious arrivals first observed on ocean bottom receivers. Through careful modeling using the para- bolic equation method, Lora demonstrated that scattering from internal waves accounted for the vertical extent and magnitude of these arrivals even at ranges of 500 to 1000 km. Dr. Van Ufflen has just accepted a research position at the University of Hawaii where she plans to continue her work on long range propagation.
Although women have made major strides in the Society from one charter member in 1929 to the almost 1200 women participating today, there is more work to be done. As of 2008, men hold 73% of jobs in science, technology, engineer- ing and mathematics (STEM) according to the AAUW (for-
Women in Acoustics 25