Career
Milestones
Ilene Busch-
Vishniac's career has been largely about
mastering sound--clarifying sounds that people want to hear
and quelling sounds that they don't.
After completing her undergraduate studies in physics and
math at the University of Rochester, Busch-Vishniac earned
her master's ('78) and doctoral ('81) degrees in mechanical
engineering at MIT. As a graduate student, she developed
computer tools for studying problem noise in the suburbs and
investigated how to produce quieter impact line computer
printers, a notoriously clamorous breed.
Later, as a post-doc and researcher at Bell Labs,
BuschVishniac developed devices for microphones and
earphones, and improved conference calling systems so that
speakers did not sound as if they are in a rainbarrel (the
troublesome "rainbarrel effect"). She has been awarded
several patents.
In 1982, Busch-
Vishniac joined the faculty at the
University
of Texas at Austin and was later named Temple Professor of
Mechanical Engineering. At Austin, she turned to the
country's noisiest problem, the racket caused by
transportation, and investigated how to build more
effective, less expensive highway sound barriers. The
solution, she says, appears to lie in the geometric design
of the barrier more than in its composition. Busch-Vishniac
plans to continue this research at Hopkins.
Busch-Vishniac's husband, astronomer Ethan Vishniac, is also
continuing his career at Hopkins, as professor of physics
and astronomy. The couple has two daughters, Cady, 12, and
Miriam, 10.
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You've said that being a woman both
opens
and closes doors in engineering. What's been your personal
experience?
Let me start with the positive. When you are female in a
male-dominated field, it's much harder to get lost in the crowd.
People notice you. That worked to my benefit when I was a junior
faculty member. It also worked to my detriment because my
mistakes were much more visible.
In general, though, I have not encountered many
difficulties that I could categorically say were related to my
gender. On occasion, I have wondered whether the reactions I have
been getting would be the same that my male counterparts might
get. But it's speculation. I know that I am aggressive. I'm
young. I am female. And it's hard to know which of those things
people are responding to.
In Texas, which is where I come from, a lot of the
engineering jobs are related to the oil industry. That is a
community where they're not used to seeing women, particularly in
the field. I've had women students over the years who have told
me they wanted to interview with Exxon or Texaco or one of the
other major oil companies, and they were literally told at the
interview that they would not be hired because everybody had to
start out on an oil platform in the ocean, and that women weren't
going to be put out there. I had a lot of trouble with that.
On the other hand, I know lots of women who have risen in the
[petroleum] industry. So I think things are changing. But saying
things are changing at the top doesn't necessarily mean that the
field engineers going out to look at the wells aren't going to
encounter some harassment, some difficulty. Every woman I've
talked to has at least one story to tell.
There are only a handful of women
engineering faculty at JHU. Do you plan to try to increase that
number?
First, the Whiting School is a small engineering school, and the
fact that there are relatively few women faculty could just be
the statistics of small numbers. Also, nationwide, there are not
large numbers of women on engineering faculties, even in areas
like computer engineering and chemical engineering, which have
tended to have larger numbers of women students. I think it is
very hard for engineering schools to compete with the industrial
offers that women are receiving. The last time I checked the
statistics, which is at least five years ago, maybe 10, women
engineers actually got paid more than men. So the offers women
were receiving from industry were simply so compelling that it
was hard to convince them to go to graduate school. And if you
don't go to graduate school, you're not going to get a faculty
position.
As for the Whiting School, I never want to compromise
quality in order to be able to check off some boxes. But I also
know that there are very highly qualified women and members of
underrepresented groups who are now getting degrees in
engineering. And we simply need to do our homework and try to
find people who can help us broaden the diversity on our
faculty.
What are some of your other
priorities?
I'd like to see Hopkins become more visible nationally. We're now
ranked nationwide something like 20th among engineering schools.
We have the potential to be in the top 10. It won't happen
overnight, but it can happen over a period of years. My goal is
to do everything I can to see that happen.
Clearly, we have an absolute powerhouse in
biomedical
engineering, and the department is well deserving of that
reputation. My priority is to build up other parts of the Whiting
School. Environmental engineering comes to mind. In the
School of
Public Health, there are courses and programs linking the
environment to public health. At
SAIS, they have an
emphasis on
international environmental policy. So I could easily imagine the
School of Arts & Sciences, the School of
Engineering, and SAIS putting together a [joint] program for
environmental studies.
You have said you would like to be a
"bridge builder," building bridges between the Whiting School and
industry. How can this best be done?
The way to start, in my opinion, is through the Society for
Engineering Alumni--Hopkins graduates in industry who are
currently helping students find industrial internships.
I also need to find out more about industries in the area. Not
just to have my hand out and say, 'Give us money,' but to forge
programs that would benefit both the industry and our students
and faculty. Some of those interactions would be for research,
and some would be through the part-time engineering program.
The transfer of technology is a very key issue. There is now no
real technology transfer office at the Whiting School. There are
no set policies for how you decide what to pursue patents on, and
whether or not faculty can have ownership in a company that spins
off the research they do. These issues need to be thrashed
out.
Will you make teaching more of a
priority
at the Whiting School?
There are faculty members who think that teaching on the
undergraduate level is simply not acceptable. I certainly got a
taste of this through the interview process. I was here three
times for interviews and I was asked almost everything you can
imagine. What no one asked me was what I felt about teaching,
what I taught, and what I want to do here in teaching. I thought
that was indicative of a bit of a problem.
I wish that I could tell you that Hopkins is
different from other major research institutions, but it simply
isn't true. At virtually every major research institution in the
U.S., research is held in highest regard, and teaching, at best,
is a distant second. There have been many attempts to change
this at some universities, but until teaching quality plays a
greater role in tenure and promotion decisions, such attempts
will be little more than lip service.
It is my opinion that the time is right for Hopkins to emerge as
a world leader in engineering education. Funding agencies have
been very interested in supporting research on educational
methods, and Hopkins students and faculty are among the best in
the world. So I hope to encourage greater activity in engineering
education research at the Whiting School, and to adopt the same
sort of exacting standards for the quality of that research as we
apply to technical research.
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SEPTEMBER 1998 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
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