U of A alumnus Jamie Zakovec works with two faculty members to evaluate the sound quality of several campus auditoriums. Their work is funded by a Women’s Giving Circle grant.
Inspired by his brother’s experience, Jamie Zakovec decided to evaluate sound quality within the educational facilities of the U of A campus. These findings have potential implications for all faculty and students in the room, regardless of hearing level.
Zakovek, who graduated from the Faye Jones School of Architecture and Design in May, partnered with two U of A professors, Jennifer Webb and Rachel Grade, to apply for a Women’s Giving Circle grant.
Their proposal, “No-Auditory-Um: Assessing the Acoustic and Spatial Interior Environment in the University of Arkansas Auditorium,” received $19,874, the largest amount ever distributed in the organization’s recent grant cycle.
This proposal allows them to train groups of students and equip them with basic tools such as light and sound meters. These students then visit the largest auditorium on campus and record data over several days in a natural environment.
Dr. Glade is Associate Professor and Program Director of the Communication Sciences and Disability Program at the College of Education and Health Professionals. She is a highly qualified Speech Language Pathologist with experience in a classroom environment. Dr. Webb is Associate Professor of Interior Architecture and Design and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies. She brings deep experience in assessing the built environment and its impact on people.
To advance this project, Webb, Glade, and Zakovec are seeking faculty members from the U of A who agree to allow researchers to visit their classes during sessions, following the appropriate Institutional Review Board approval process. Faculty members teaching in the largest auditoriums are invited to participate.
A distinguished graduate with a bachelor’s degree in interior design, Zakovek is now an interior designer at Modus Studio in Fayetteville. Her inspiration for this work is her older brother Jake Zakovec, who graduated from U of A in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Recreation and Sports Management. He was born deaf and has a cochlear implant.
While at U of A, he did not enroll in the Center for Educational Access, primarily because he didn’t want to deal with paperwork and labels. He just wanted to be a college student.
His dissatisfaction with the on-campus learning environment resonated with his sister. Interior Trained as an architecture and design student, she finds solutions to several problems he faced, such as background noise, faculty members not wearing microphones, poor sound quality, and other obstacles. I knew I could help find
Her brother’s experience made Zakovec want to better understand these spaces designed primarily for education communicated through the spoken word. Quality sound is paramount to learning.
Zakovec’s pinnacle project included a mixed-methods research protocol that provided both quantitative and qualitative data. She collected photographs, architectural drawings, sound and light readings, and material evaluations of her four auditoriums on campus.
But that project was just her doing all the work. We also collected data when there were no students or staff in the classroom.
This Women’s Giving Circle grant allows for a richer study by collecting multiple data points on different days and under different conditions.
Webb said the research will be of value across U of A’s campuses, especially for its estimated 377 deaf students. However, the World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion young people are at risk of “music-induced hearing loss.”
The data show that all students perform poorly in spaces with poor acoustics, she said. Poor acoustic environments also negatively impact bilingual and learning-impaired students, as well as faculty within educational settings.
Webb said the group’s findings could lead to far-reaching positive changes on campus. We plan to share the results through our office. We also share our achievements through academic conferences and publications.
Faculty members teaching in large auditoriums are invited to participate in data collection. Students, faculty, and staff with hearing loss who wish to participate in the research are also welcome to participate in the research. For more information, please contact Jennifer Webb (jwebb@uark.edu) or Rachel Glade (rglade@uark.edu).
