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Sound Perspectives
Carl J. Rosenberg
Postal:
Acentech Incorporated
33 Moulton Street Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA
Email:
crosenberg@acentech.com
Acoustical Society Foundation Fund
Introduction
It is not a catchy name, the Acoustical Society Foundation Fund (“the Fund”). But in many ways, the Fund is the life blood of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA): its heritage to the past, its pulse on the present, and its commitment to the future.
Like the development office of a university, the Fund raises money to support the Society’s mission. But unlike that university endowment, no money from the Fund is used to support operating expenses, and all of its resources are returned to the membership through fellowships, scholarships, prizes, travel stipends, and other initiatives. The Fund has a corpus of about $7.5 million, which is more than one- third of the total current assets of the ASA. Here’s how the Fund works.
Fellowships and Scholarships
The Fund supports fellowships and scholarships for research and graduate study in acoustics (for lists of all past recipients of the various awards mentioned in this article, go to http://acousticstoday.org/funds and http://acousticstoday.org/prizes). The largest of these is the Frederick V. Hunt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Acoustics, which has been the pride of the ASA since its inception in 1976, over 40 years ago. The Fellowship covers a full year of graduate work in any area under the multidisciplinary umbrella of the ASA. Many recipients of the award have risen to prominence in their academic fields, and many have also been active in ASA leadership roles. The Fellowship is named after Professor Hunt who was the 1969 recipient of the ASA Gold Medal Award. (Read about Professor Hunt at http:// acousticstoday.org/awards). It was Professor Hunt’s wish that a part of his estate be used to further the science of and education in acoustics, and the Fund helps ensure that legacy.
Other major contributions to the Fund have been used to establish the Raymond H. Stetson Scholarship in Phonetics and Speech Science, in honor of Professor Stetson who was a pioneer investigator in phonetics and speech science; the Leo and Gabriella Beranek Scholarship in Architectural Acoustics and Noise Control; and the Frank and Virginia Winker Memorial Scholarship for Graduate Study in Acoustics (which will be inaugurated this year).
Awards and Travel Stipends
The Fund also coordinates recognition of excellence in academic performance and research through various awards and travel stipends. These include the Robert Bradford Newman Student Award Fund, which awards medals each year to about a dozen outstanding students in architectural acoustics; the Institute for Acoustics for the Performing Arts Russell Johnson Award, which supports attendance at the Concert Hall Research Group summer institutes; the Robert W. Young Fund for participation by the ASA at international standards meetings and for undergradu- ate research in acoustics; and the operations of the Physical Acoustics Summer Study (PASS) Program.
©2017 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved. volume 13, issue 3 | Fall 2017 | Acoustics Today | 55