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From the President | Michael R. Stinson
As I write this editorial, just a few weeks after the Salt Lake City meeting, I am starting to relax. It was an interesting but very busy meeting for me. Now, as I look forward to my term as
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) President, I suspect (as previous presidents have warned me) that I will have an equally busy, and daunting, year. The ASA is in a period of change, with many exciting initiatives underway. I will do what I can to ensure that things go smoothly.
The ASA is a wonderfully broad organization drawing mem- bers from many different professions and covering many different areas of acoustics. My research career spans several of the technical areas. I have been a member of the Tech- nical Committees (TCs) on Psychological and Physiologi- cal Acoustics, Physical Acoustics, and Noise; some of my projects over the years have been more in the engineering or architectural areas. In the past years, when I could attend technical sessions regularly, I took advantage of the breadth of the ASA and often sat in on talks outside my areas of ex- pertise. I encourage all members, particularly those new to the ASA, to do the same.
Many of the initiatives being planned in the ASA have a strong international component. I believe that I have an ap- propriate outlook for these initiatives. For a start, I am Ca- nadian and have a relationship with the Canadian Acousti- cal Association going back several decades. I am very much involved with the International Commission for Acoustics (ICA), having served in this organization for the last nine years (the last three as its Secretary General). This activity brings me into contact with national acoustical societies worldwide.
By the way, I am not the first ASA President to come from Canada. I was preceded by at least three others (Edgar Shaw, Tony Embleton, and Gilles Daigle); interestingly, all four of us came from the same acoustics group at the National Re- search Council of Canada.
One of my priorities as ASA President will be the contin- ued implementation of the recommendations from the ASA Strategic Plan. So much effort from so many people went into this visioning exercise that I am not about to let the rec- ommendations gather dust on a shelf. Our previous presi- dent, Christy Holland, had the same view. She created task
forces to address the four key goals and ensured that budgets were in place to support their actions. Already, significant success stories are coming out of the Strategic Plan. I am highlighting some of these below; for more details, though, you should visit the Web site http://acousticalsociety.org/SLP.
Task Force 1 was set up to address Goal 1, “Awareness of Acoustics,” with the priority objective of expanding the pro- motion of ASA activities and resources through emerging media and online content. Several successes have already been achieved. (1) A logo design contest was held to gener- ate a logo that would match the expanded role of Explore Sound, the ASA's outreach Web site. A total of 53 unique entries were received from designers worldwide, some ASA members and some not. The final voting was open to all ASA members, and ballots from 800 members were received in the online poll. Visit http://exploresound.org/winners/ to view the winning designs. (2) Seed funding of 5,000 Euros was recommended to, and subsequently approved by, the Executive Council for the ICA's initiative to have the year 2019 proclaimed the International Year of Sound. (3) An ac- tion group assisted in reviewing an outreach video produced by the ASA Public Relations Committee.
Goal 2, “Membership Engagement and Diversity,” has the priority objectives of increasing remote connectivity to meetings and expanding promotion and participation of early career members. Task Force 2 has achieved great progress on both fronts. In Jacksonville, 7 special sessions and 1 TC meeting were streamed live; in Salt Lake City, 19 special sessions, 2 TC meetings, and 1 committee meeting were streamed live. Reception has generally been very posi- tive. Live streaming is now being planned for the Honolulu meeting. In Salt Lake City, straddling Friday and Saturday, a workshop was held to encourage early career acousticians, and this will be described in detail in the next (winter) is- sue of Acoustics Today. This popular event, tagged the Early- Career Acousticians Retreat (EAR 2016), had 45 attendees on-site (and more online) to learn about the ASA and par- ticipate in networking and leadership sessions. On talking with several attendees partway through, I was impressed by their enthusiasm.
Goal 3, “Dissemination of Information and Knowledge,” has the priority objective of streamlining and upgrading author, Continued on next page
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