As the first order of business in this report, the Technical Committee on Noise would like to commend its outgoing Chair, Richard J. Peppin, for three years of outstanding service. During Rich’s tenure the membership of TCN grew and became stronger. He promoted and encouraged many technical programs and special sessions of high quality. His leadership was clearly evident, and due to his contributions TCN prospered and is in a great position to continue to benefit its members, and the ASA. Thanks Rich!

The Technical Committee on Noise met twice in the past year: in the fall of 2000 in Newport Beach, CA, and in the spring of 2001 in Chicago, IL. Both meetings had a great turnout.

The ASA meeting in Newport Beach was particularly well attended, as it was a joint meeting with the Institute for Noise Control Engineering (INCE). This was a very large and successful meeting for the noise community, with over 25 Special Sessions with more than 130 papers. As Leo Beranek and Bill Lang pointed out in a distinguished lecture on the History of the ASA in Noise Control at the meeting, the ASA and INCE must continue to combine efforts on both future meetings and publications in order to stay strong and serve their constituencies. The Newport Beach meeting could serve as a model for future collaboration between the ASA and INCE.

It was also noted that the meeting of the National Council of Acoustical Consultants (NCAC) held in conjunction with the ASA meeting was the largest ever. Most members agreed that the joint meeting with INCE was a significant factor.

There are many people to thank for the success of the Newport Beach meeting, including the Program Organizers, Rich Peppin, Brigitte Schulte-Fortkamp, George Maling, Alan Marsh, and John Van Houten; the Session chairs, Bruce Walker, James Thompson, Alan Marsh, Gordon Bricken, Rob Greene, Greg Tocci, Gary Siebein, Dave Lubman, Glenn Warnaka, John Van Houten, Ken Cunefare, Bob Hellweg, Lou Sutherland, Brigitte Schulte-Fortkamp, Joe Pope, Frank Brittain, Paul Schomer, Dan Raichel, Paul Donavan, Bob Putnam, and Tor Kihlman, and, of course, all of the paper presenters.

The ASA meeting in Chicago offered a number of fine sessions on a variety of topics from soundscapes and community noise policy to automotive and aircraft noise source measurement and control. TCN also cosponsored several sessions with architectural and engineering acoustics. Thanks go to the Program Organizers, Angelo Campanella and Bennett Brooks; Session chairs, Brigitte Schulte-Fortkamp, Dan Raichel, Angelo Campanella, Bob Hellweg, Gilles Daigle, Dave Lubman and Joe Pope, and the many paper presenters.

The positive position of TCN is evidenced by the enthusiastic support by members for developing many noteworthy special sessions and tutorials for the upcoming meetings in Ft. Lauderdale, Pittsburgh and Cancun. These meetings should prove to be very interesting and rewarding.

An area of continued visibility is the Standard on Classroom Acoustics. The draft standard has now been approved by the ANSI S-12 Committee on Noise, and final comments are currently being resolved. It is expected that the standard will be published later this year. That should help to contribute to quieter classrooms, and a more educationally friendly environment in our schools.

Also, as many know, the new ASA Standards Manager, Susan Blaeser, has moved the Standards office to Melville, Long Island, near the ASA main office, from its previous Wall Street location. This should allow better support and coordination of its extensive standards work. In related news, the ASA Executive Council committed to continue its support for the Secretariat of the ISO Technical Committee TC 108 on Shock and Vibration. It was recognized that support of US participation and leadership in this area of international standards is crucial to the Society. The ASA Committee on Standards is exploring ways of increasing funding for this effort. One way is to encourage TCN members to seek support from their organizations for membership in one or more of the ANSI S committees. The cost is truly small relative to the significant benefits.

TCN would like to thank Noral Stewart for his leadership and efforts to further the Outstanding Papers by Young Presenters awards. Many candidates presented papers, and Noral organized a large contingent of judges. As of this writing, the results are still being tabulated. Any awards for the Chicago meeting will be declared in forthcoming TCN announcements. The latest award was recently presented to Alan Kennedy for his paper at the Columbus meeting.

Technical Initiative funding for TCN activities continues in the areas of the younger presenter awards, web page maintenance, the student reception, and the development of the online library (see www.nonoise.org). New areas include support for a classroom construction TV documentary (with TCAA & TCSC), and funds to distribute the classroom acoustics booklet in PDF format.

In other action, TCN membership elected to cosponsor a Miguel Junger Retrospective session. Also, TCN is actively seeking candidates for the position of Student Representative to the ASA. Some travel support is being offered. Candidates and the sponsoring faculty member should contact the TCN Chair.

Finally, on a personal note, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to the TCN membership for giving me the opportunity to serve you as Chair. It is my hope that I can meet the high expectations for this position established by my predecessors. With your help, TCN can continue to provide an outstanding forum for the evolving exchange of ideas in the noise community.

Bennett M. Brooks

Chair 2000-2003