Page 62 - 2016Winter

ASANews
Engaging Early Career Acousticians in the Acoustical Society of America
Tessa Bent
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University 200 S. Jordan Avenue, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA tbent@indiana.edu
Early career members are essential in growing the member- ship of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), increasing the Society’s vibrancy, and modernizing its approach. One of the four goals of the new Strategic Leadership Plan for the Future is membership engagement and diversity.1 With- in this goal, one of the priority objectives is to expand our promotion of the ASA to early career members and to work to increase their participation in the Society. The transition from student status to positions in academia, industry, and government can lead to both challenges and opportunities for continued participation in the ASA. There are many ad- ditional time demands that can hinder regular attendance at conferences, such as the demands of teaching, service, and research for those in academia, which only increase during the pretenure period. Additionally, financial support for at- tending conferences is not always available for those with more junior status, and this can be especially true for those in industry and government. Yet, at this formative career stage, it is essential that people whose work relates to acous- tics build their networks, expand their expertise, and share the knowledge they are creating. Actively participating in the biannual meetings of the ASA is one pathway for achiev- ing these career objectives.
As a Society, we can do more to promote our early career members. Although student members are offered numerous programs and events throughout the conference as well as social media outlets for connecting beyond the meetings, the support once a member advances to early career status is less robust. However, in this career stage, it is crucial to both retain our members and draw in new members. Therefore, we need to be forward thinking and creative about how to support our early career members and actively engage them in the Society.
1 SeethearticlebyASAExecutiveDirectorSusanFox
in the Summer 2016 issue of Acoustics Today, available at http://acousticstoday.org/summer.
Our first large-scale effort in this arena was the Early Career Acousticians Retreat (EAR), which was a two-day event held after the Salt Lake City meeting in May 2016. Forty-three attendees who were within 10 years of their terminal degree participated, including individuals from academia, industry, and government. Twelve participants had never attended an ASA meeting before, demonstrating that events such as these have the potential to draw in new members and ex- pand the Society.
The purpose of the retreat was twofold. First, we wanted to provide early career participants with additional leadership and networking skills to help them advance their careers. The goal was accomplished through two interactive and en- gaging workshops given by Dr. Gregory Northcraft, an ex- pert in the area of leadership.
Second, we wanted to get input from the early career mem- bers about their visions for the future of the ASA. To fulfill this goal, we held a World Café event, a widely employed method of engaging large groups of people in structured conversa- tions to facilitate dialogue and collaboration.2 In this event, groups of participants brainstormed both the challenges and solutions revolving around several themes: early career member engagement, modernization of the ASA, member- ship diversity, scientific communication, and interdisciplin- ary collaboration. The top-rated solutions derived from the World Café discussions were the establishment of an early career committee within the ASA, continued support for both live and recorded streaming of technical sessions, and events to encourage interactions among technical commit- tees. The Membership Engagement and Diversity Task Force will use this information to continue devising programming that most effectively engages our early career members and draws in new membership.
In addition to the EAR, two other early career initiatives were included in the programming for the Salt Lake City ASA meeting: the ribbon initiative and an information booth for early career members. The ribbon initiative al- lowed meeting participants to collect ribbons to add to their name badges to designate their accomplishments (e.g., I published in JASA! [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America]) and to indicate ways in which they are engaged
2 For more information on the World Café method, visit http://www.theworldcafe.com.
60 | Acoustics Today | Winter 2016