Page 8 - Fall2020

their young children (or, in my case, encourage my kids to introduce training to my grandkids).
Our “Sound Perspectives” section starts with our series on “Ask an Acoustician” (quite a popular series accord- ing to our survey). In this issue, long-time ASA member D. Keith Wilson talks about his research on atmospheric acoustics as well as his many contributions to the ASA.
This is followed by a wonderful article with too many authors to list here, the ASA Publications Staff. I realized that although most ASA members interact with these people at meetings or during the submission process to one of the ASA publications, few get to know anything about our colleagues or their invaluable contributions to the ASA. So, besides reading the essay and getting to know a bit about these wonderful folks, I encourage you to meet them “in person” at a future ASA meeting.
As many of you are aware (hopefully through donations), the ASA has a Foundation Fund that supports many ASA activities such as travel awards and scholarships. In the past, the Foundation has had short pieces in every issue of AT. However, after discussions with the Foundation leadership, we agreed that ASA members might like to know more about the Foundation and what it contrib- utes to the ASA as well as a brief accounting of the funds.
Thus, we decided to shift to a schedule of one essay each year by Foundation Chair Jim Miller. I encourage every- one to read and learn about this very important part of our Society (and, of course, consider a donation).
The next essay is on a topic of great importance for every member of the ASA and for the ASA itself, sharing our work with the lay public and journalists. Effectively communicat- ing the complex work that many of us do to family members, reporters, deans, and others is not easy, and it greatly benefits from training. Thus, this essay by Andy Piacsek introduces us to the topic of communication with folks other than our peers. Although a short essay here (and others in the past by ASA Education and Outreach Coordinator L. Keeta Jones) cannot give a real course in science communication, the essay gives substantial food for thought and some direction for those who want to be better communicators.
In the last essay, ASA Editorial Assistant and my close colleague for AT Kat Setzer discusses the results of the survey (look for the section about Kat in the ASA Publi- cations essay on page 76).
Finally, we are pleased to announce that the newly designed Acoustics Today has been recognized for excellence in publica- tion design for print magazines with a Gold Award in the Hermes Creative Award com- petition for 2020 (see bit.ly/3gIcXe0). This international competition recognizes out- standing work of design professionals for a
variety of media. We are very proud of this recognition and thank our colleagues at OPUS for their outstanding and creative work for Acoustics Today and the Acousti- cal Society of America. The award is to OPUS and the
Acoustical Society of America.
8 Acoustics Today • Fall 2020