Photo credit: Pixabay
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The Quiet Coalition’s and Quiet Communities’ Arline Bronzaft was recently a featured guest on the American Psychological Association podcast. I read the transcript of the podcast but you can listen to the recording if that’s your preferred mode of knowledge acquisition.
Arline’s PhD is in psychology, and she is professor emerita at the City University of New York. As discussed in the podcast, Arline has served five New York City mayors on the board of the nonprofit GrowNYC, responsible for helping New Yorkers with noise complaints. In 2018, Arline was the first recipient of the American Psychological Association Citizen Psychologist Presidential citation for her community work to lessen noise.
Arline discusses how she got her start in noise work when one of her students approached her after a lecture to inform her of noise from an elevated train track interfering with her child’s learning in school. Arline’s pioneering research showed that students on the noisy side of the school were a year behind in reading by the sixth grade, compared to children on the quieter side of the building. As a result, the Metropolitan Transit Authority made improvements on the tracks and the Board of Education installed sound absorbing ceilings in the noisy classrooms. Arline’s second study showed that students on both sides of the building were reading at the same grade level.
That fortuitous event led to Arline’s productive and impactful noise career, which she continues to this day. I won’t summarize the rest of the podcast here. You’re going to have to read the transcript or listen to it, but I can guarantee that it will be time well-spent.
