Page 87 - Winter 2020

Figure 1. Members of the East-South-EastAsia Regional Chapter at their Charter Ceremony. Left to right: Siu-Kit Lau, Maurice K.L. Yeung, Wong Kam Sing, Ji-Qing Wang, Lo Wai Kwok, King-Kwong Iu, Andy Chung, and Cheuk M. Mak.
chapters are active in community activities year-round. The student chapter at the University of Texas at Austin (see atscasa.org) annually participates in the university- wide “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day,” where girls from middle schools in the surrounding Austin area
come to learn about various STEM fields (Figure 2).
school fairs, PSU open houses, and events for visually impaired high-school students. Interaction with students who have progressed in their education is also important, such as the Student Audio Summit at Webster University where the St. Louis, MO, Regional Chapter conducted an ASA acoustics panel. The spark of interest in acoustics can happen at any age or educational stage, and by participating in outreach events, future generations of acousticians are strengthened in numbers and passion.
Similarly, the Georgia Tech (GT), Atlanta, student
chapter (see b.gatech.edu/2Ej7jAR) participates in the
Technology, Engineering, and Computing Camp at GT
(wie.gatech.edu/tec-camp) that was created to introduce
middle-school girls to the topics of its namesake. Meetings are an integral part of the functionality of
Virtually Everywhere
Members from the Penn State (PSU), University Park, Student Chapter (see psuasa.org) participate in multiple
regional and student chapters and provide a venue to host organized events and facilitate planning of future endeavors. Sometimes it is challenging to meet in person and conduct events due to the size of a region, travel costs, or unexpected worldwide pandemics. After the cancellation of the spring 2020 ASA conference, the Florida Regional Chapter held their spring 2020 meeting online. They featured presentations of 8 papers 3 three different technical committees with attendance of 23 members. Similarly, WebEx meetings allowed University of Hartford, Hartford, CT, students (see bit.ly/2FuojEE) in many locations like Alaska, Chicago, IL, and Florida to attend presentations on “Creation of a New ASTM Standard” and “Running an Acoustics Consulting Business in the Age of Coronavirus.” Talks featured speakers from an acoustics consulting firm in Southern California and were very well received, according Hartford Student Chapter advisor Bob Celmer. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, student chapter (see umichasa.org) sought to make use of virtual technologies to rejuvenate its membership by organizing a rotating presentation with the Columbia College Chicago Student
Figure 2. University of Texas at Austin students (left to right) Matthew Zeh, John Cormack, Alicia Casacchia, and Tyler McGee explaining basic acoustic principles through demonstrations to Girl Day participants.
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