Acoustics education to support the future workforce

In 2022, the Office of Naval Research initiated a project through the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to assess the current and future ocean acoustics education and workforce landscape over the next decade. The report published in 2024—Ocean Acoustics Education and Expertise—captures the continued and still growing value of ocean acoustics to defense, while also highlighting the expanding need for acoustics education in policy, navigation, economic, industry, and environmental sectors. Although the report findings and recommendations were developed from the ocean acoustics education perspective, the content is common to all sub-disciplines of acoustics and highlights challenges to acoustics and interdisciplinary STEM education at large. The report describes how the multidisciplinary nature of acoustics and the low visibility of acoustics career paths have contributed to shortfalls in workforce recruitment and retention. The presentation will provide a historical perspective on how the ocean acoustics and the greater acoustics community evolved to its current condition, discuss existing ocean acoustics education and training opportunities, identify current and projected workforce needs, share recommendations to recruit and retain a diverse workforce, and strategize on future alignment of training and education components with the projected workforce.