Page 75 - Summer 2021

How Are ASA Students Being Impacted by the Pandemic?
Hilary Kates Varghese, Kieren H. McCord, Mallory Morgan, and Elizabeth Weidner
“Bubble” took on an entirely new meaning to acousticians this past year. Instead of being thought of for its strong acoustic scattering properties, a bubble now holds universal meaning as the isolating social barrier we must maintain to protect against exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There is no doubt that we all have had to make adjustments to our world view during this pandemic. However, living in a bubble can be insulating. So, to get a sense of what our Acoustical Society of America (ASA) student community has been experiencing, we surveyed students on the impact of the pandemic in their lives. Unsurprisingly, the pan- demic has brought measurable setbacks for students. Even so, many students have found ways to adapt. As acoustical oceanography PhD student Ernst Uzhansky (University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel) remarked in his survey response, “The strongest crisis is the door for the biggest opportunities.” We hope this article begins a dialogue among the entire ASA community on supporting our student population as we navigate the long-term changes catalyzed by the pandemic.
Sixty registered ASA students (out of 666), from all technical committees and specialty groups, responded to our survey on the personal and academic impact of the pandemic. A majority of respondents were doctoral stu- dents (82%), but there were also master’s students (10%), undergraduate students (3%), and postdoctoral research- ers (5%). Most respondents identified as laboratory scientists (65%), though others identified as applied sci- entists (22%), field scientists (8%), theoreticians (3%), or the question was not applicable (2%). Seventy-three per- cent of all respondents were studying at US institutions.
To begin to understand the impact of the pandemic, stu- dents responded to a question asking if their graduation was or would be delayed, accelerated (none provided this response), or not impacted by the pandemic. Over half of the respondents will have to delay their graduation due to the pandemic, with 45% experiencing a delay of less than a year and 7% experiencing a delay of greater than
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https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2021.17.2.02
a year. Thirty-eight percent of all respondents reported no delay, while the remaining respondents were unsure what the impact would be.
Students were also asked to reflect on the impact of the pandemic in their personal and academic life, rating the impact on a five-point scale. The results are shown in Figure 1 and demonstrate a strong negative trend, with most students rating a “slight negative” or “significant negative” impact of the pandemic on both their per- sonal and academic life. The impact of the pandemic on academic life was more often rated as a “slight negative,” while personal life was split between the two.
The following anecdotes bring these answers beyond just numbers, providing insight into specific circumstances, challenges, and personal victories of our students. The ideas presented are either summaries of frequently occurring comments, direct experiences, or quotes from individuals.
The pandemic has impacted the quality and trajectory of student research efforts. New students have had to accli- mate to unfamiliar laboratory layouts as well as interrupted, complex, or hampered protocols. Meanwhile, more senior
Figure 1. Student-rated impact of the pandemic on their personal and academic life (n = 60).
Volume 17, issue 2 | Summer 2021 • Acoustics Today 75