Page 57 - 2017Spring

ASANews
ASA School 2016
Snowbird, Utah
Stan E. Dosso
School of Earth and Ocean Sciences University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia V8P 5C2 Canada sdosso@uvic.ca
Judy R. Dubno
Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery Medical University of South Carolina
135 Rutledge Avenue, MSC 550 Charleston, South Carolina 29425-5500 USA dubnojr@musc.edu
Brigitte Schulte-Fortkamp
Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Engineering Acoustics Technical University of Berlin
Secr TA7, Einsteinufer 25, 10587 Berlin, Germany b.schulte-fortkamp@tu-berlin.de
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) School 2016 was held on May 21-22, 2016, the weekend immediately preced- ing the Spring 2016 ASA Meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. This was the third ASA School, following successful ASA schools in 2012 in Kansas City, MO, and 2014 in Providence, RI. The ASA School 2016 provided the opportunity for 60 graduate students and early-career acousticians (Figure 1) to learn about and discuss a wide variety of topics in acoustics within the interdisciplinary theme of Living in the Acoustic Environ- ment. The school featured lectures and demonstrations by 10 leading acousticians as well as roundtables and discussion groups to expand on the presentations and foster commu- nication across disciplines and technical areas of acoustics. The program also included a welcome reception, school dinner, breakfasts and lunches, and morning and afternoon breaks, which were all designed to provide participants with ample opportunities to meet and interact with the instruc- tors and with each other.
A major goal of the ASA School 2016 was to provide a forum for attendees to get to know one another and begin to form professional/social networks with other early-career acous- ticians, which we hope will benefit the participants through- out their careers. To encourage this, participants introduced themselves to the group individually, using a prepared slide that included a personal photo, a figure representing their interests in acoustics, and information about their educa- tional program or career; these slides were also provided to the participants as a pictorial directory to help them remem- ber and maintain contact with other school attendees. In ad- dition to building interpersonal networks, we hope that, in a larger sense, offering ASA Schools on a regular basis will en- hance the long-term level of participation and engagement of students and early-career professionals in acoustics and in the ASA and help keep the Society strong.
The previous two ASA Schools were held in the same hotel (or nearby) as the associated ASA meetings. This year we took advantage of the diverse geography of Utah and held the school at the Cliff Lodge in the ski town of Snowbird. Less than 30 miles from Salt Lake City, Snowbird is located in the rugged Wasatch Mountains and provided a spectacu- lar setting for the school. The Lodge provided comfortable accommodations and excellent meeting facilities with dra- matic views of the surrounding peaks. The somewhat iso- lated setting (compared with a downtown hotel) also had the effect of keeping the participants together during off-time, which seemed to contribute to the interactions and strong sense of group identity that developed over the weekend.
The ASA School 2016 instructors covered a diverse set of topics in acoustics. Thomas Gabrielson illustrated funda- mental acoustic concepts through a series of ingenious but simple physical demonstrations that could be carried out in any classroom. Scott Sommerfeldt and André Fiebig consid- ered omnipresent noise and noise control and the impact they can have on well-being and quality of life. Anthony
Figure 1. Group photo of ASA School 2016 participants at Snowbird, UT. ©2017 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.
Hoover and Lily Wang discussed architectural acoustics and how the design and construction of buildings, from classrooms to world-class concert halls, impact human performance and per- ception. Thomas Moore showed how advanced optical measure- ments, such as laser Doppler vibrometry, allow the visualiza-
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