Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics
Volume 19, 2013 http://acousticalsociety.org/
ICA 2013 Montreal
Montreal, Canada
2 - 7 June 2013
Education in Acoustics
Session 2aED: Tools for Teaching Advanced Acoustics
2aED1. Summer school for acoustics graduate students
Steven L. Garrett*, Anthony A. Atchley, Logan E. Hargrove, Thomas J. Matula, Joseph R. Gladden and Henry E. Bass
*Corresponding author's address: Grad. Prog. in Acoustics, Penn State University, PO Box 30, State College, PA 16801-0030,
sxg185@psu.edu
In addition to subject mastery and the focused effort required to complete a thesis project, graduate students also need to develop a broad
understanding of their field and cultivate a familiarity with the larger community of researchers and practitioners. The "summer school" format
has been shown to enhance both subject-matter breadth and build community awareness in physical acoustics. Physical Acoustics Summer
School (PASS) has been held in late-May, in even-numbered years, since 1992. The format for each day is usually two three-hour lectures
followed by evening discussion groups to answer questions and explore extensions of the day's lecture topics. One lecture session is typically
dedicated to acoustics demonstrations. Attendance for the full week is required of all participants who also dine together three times each day.
Venues are chosen to provide isolation that minimizes distraction and maximizes interactions among all participants. Typical enrollment has
been ten distinguished lecturers (including many Silver Medal winners in Physical Acoustics), ten discussion leaders, and thirty graduate
students. This format has been successfully extended to one other ASA Technical Committee: the marine bioacoustics community has held their
summer school twice (SeaBASS). PASS has now been functioning long enough that former students have become lecturers.
Published by the Acoustical Society of America through the American Institute of Physics
Garrett et al.
©2013 Acoustical Society of America [DOI: 10.1121/1.4798357]
Received 20 Jan 2013; published 2 Jun 2013
Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Vol. 19, 025001 (2013) Page 1