There's an opening for a Fellowship recipient to start in Fall 2024. We have a virtual Open House to talk about grad school at BYU on Thurs. Nov. 16 and an in-person Open House on Fri. Dec. 1. See https://physics.byu.edu/graduate/openhouse for more info on the open houses.
William James and Charlene Fuhriman Strong Family Musical Acoustics Endowed Fellowship
The William James and Charlene Fuhriman Strong Family Musical Acoustics Endowed Fellowship was established by William (Bill) and Charlene Strong in January 2021 to financially support a graduate student to conduct musical acoustics research within the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University. The purpose of this fellowship fund is to encourage and enable outstanding graduate students to conduct research in the field of musical acoustics including, but not limited to the broad areas of sound production mechanisms in musical instruments, radiation properties of musical instruments, and radiation of musical instrument sounds into surrounding environments. Generally this is highly technical, physics-based research.
Pictured with his wife Charlene above, Dr. William Strong did a lot of musical acoustics research during his career as a professor at BYU that spanned from 1967-2001. Lists of his students' theses and papers published reflect this work. He was well known in the Acoustical Society of America's (ASA) Musical Acoustics Technical Committee. Dr. Strong is a Fellow of the ASA, a recipient of the ASA's Silver Medal, and a recipient of the ASA's Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education.
About the Fellowship
Masters or PhD students may be supported by this fellowship with preference given to PhD students. Awards are normally given for 3 years at a time, though the faculty committee can modify this according to the student situation. The award covers a full-time research assistantship and tuition (it may also include funds for books, fees, materials, equipment, supplies, and travel).
General information about the graduate program in the Dept. of Physics & Astron. can be found at this page and in this handbook. Applications for admission as a graduate student are due Jan. 15 of each year to start in the following Fall semester.
The idea is that in a year when a new award may be given, once graduate students submit their applications, the P&A Dept. graduate committee will first review applications and decide whether students may be admitted or not. Then the Strong Fellowship committee will select a recipient of this fellowship and if that students accepts they will be admitted into the graduate program. The student may then talk to any of the acoustics faculty about potential projects that either the student comes up with (and the faculty member is willing to work with them on that topic) or that the faculty member comes up with a possible project.
To apply for this fellowship one must apply to BYU's Department of Physics & Astronomy graduate student program before the usual Jan. 15 deadline and in their letter of intent they should state that they have an interest in acoustics. All applicants interested in acoustics will be considered for the fellowship, though applicants may feel free to express their specific interest in musical acoustics research and describe any unique qualifications/goals they may have that may be helpful when selecting the recipient. For more information contact the chair over this fellowship: Brian Anderson.
Current and Past Recipients
- 2021-2023 - Samuel Bellows, Ph.D. 2023 - High Resolution Directivities and Spherical Harmonic Decompositions
