Date: 3/10/2011

Following a year of research and administrative reviews, President Carter approved on Wednesday, 3/9/2011, the Audio Arts + Acoustics proposal for a new Degree Major: Bachelor of Science in Acoustics.

This is an exciting development that responds to the needs of the acoustics industry and graduate education. It places our College at the cutting edge and provides students with the first undergraduate degree in acoustics and perception of its kind in the country.The proposal can be reviewed here. (IRIS login required):

This new program and curriculum grew out of the feedback by past graduates and their employers and/or graduate advisors, and has been specifically designed to a) address all deficiencies identified in our previous relevant curriculum/degree (including its designation as a Bachelor of Arts), b) retain a strong liberal arts component, c) emphasize acoustics’ perceptual dimension, and d) provide a degree path that will prepare our Acoustics students to compete successfully in the workplace against holders of Masters degrees in acoustics.

By endorsing this proposal, the President made triple history: a) instituting the first undergraduate degree program in acoustics in the United States that also addresses issues of perception and cognition, b) instituting the first science degree in the College’s more than 120-year history and c) making possible an undergraduate program that can compete head to head with the best acoustics graduate programs in the country, something already demonstrated by AA+A’s strong recent presence at the latest Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics.

AA+A would like to acknowledge the help and hard work on this by a large number of individuals. More specifically, we extend our gratitude to all committee members (Dominique Chéenne, Peter Zhang, Doug Jones, Luis Nasser, Ron Elling), but especially to Dominique and Ron, for their hard work towards accomplishing our objective. We also owe thanks to the SMA and LAS Deans’ offices and to numerous department Chairs (five of whom also wrote formal letters of support for inclusion in the proposal) for reading and contributing to early versions of the proposal.

Finally, special acknowledgement and thanks are due to the SCMT Chair, Constantin Rasinariu, and faculty members, Luis Nasser and Pan Papacosta, for contributing significant resources, expertise, time, and curricular support to this initiative.