IEEE-USA Meet the Candidates (IEEE-USA President and Member at Large)

(Opening Remarks)->

1) IEEE-USA President Elects

Marc Apter: We need to establish an IEEE-USA Sponsored Continuum of Education Program. This is a K-12 program anchored in the pre-college program.

We need to enhance the soft skills and technical skills of young professionals.

IEEE-USA issues->

-Engineer supply
-Older engineers
-Quality if undergraduate education
-Enhancement of status of members of the profession
-Portable pensions in the US
-Employer support of employee's involvement in technical and professional activities

Nita Patel: Manages a team of 30 engineers. IEEE-USA as an organization has challenges that center around communications, declining membership, and relevance to the profession and members. We need to articulate IEEE-USA's vision and we need to understand how our sections interpret this vision. We also need to support people that we corral around our vision and recognize the challenges that they face in promoting change.


2) Member at Large Candidates

Dennis Ray- Undergrad in EE but PHD in Business. Has been involved with congressional contacts and is a member of PES. Wants IEEE-USA to be the trusted source of info and advice.

1) We need to be proactive- workforce is getting older
2) Need to make a big difference in what we do- Make accomplishments known
3) Need to use problem solving skills- there are challenges so we need to be creative in solving them
4) Should not wash the vision out with the bath water
5) We need to fan the flames- support GOLD members

Tom Tierney- Physicist, currently a program manager at Los Alamos, former GOLD chair, vice chair of his section

Change is coming and we need to grow our multimedia offering, ebooks, etc.

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Question: What 3 activities would you champion to increase member value?

Tom: Conferences are our main means to foster new ideas, therefore Virtual conferencing. Youtube and the ability to do real-time streaming. We need to identify the next generation of technologies that will benefit our membership growth.

Dennis: We need to expand the STEP program to capture the GOLD excitement. We need to highlight technology myths as well as relevant policies.


Question: What is your strongest personal trait?

Nita: Being a translator. Able to translate the vision from the top of the organization to the people down below. Able to find the best way to communicate information to your audience.

Marc: Putting teams together. Able to put together a team that can generate the best ideas.


Question: How would the members at large reach out to members?

Dennis: I would not reach out to individual members, I would participate in the board's communication schemes

Tom: Blogs are effective as as having official office hours where members could communicate via videoconferencing.


Question: What policies would you enact to promote our IEEE's 2020 vision?

Marc: I want to add 20,000 new members before 2020. Making more use of technology quicker. Get it out there quickly and make use of it thoroughly.

Nita: We cannot corner ourselves into any one vision. It's not about how many members we have but how we have them engaged.


Question: A significant number of our members have no idea what IEEE-USA is about. How would you address this?

Tom: IEEE-USA has a great webpage and we need to draw more attention to it. IEEE-USA needs to get more involved in the technical conferences, pull out the new technologies, and promote them in new policies.


Question: What can IEEE-USA do to diversify it's sources of revenue?

Nita: Conferences are a great source of revenue but we need to prioritize our ideas and pick the most relevant ones.

Marc: Rather than hold more conferences that concentrate upon traditional ideas, let's look into ideas that have never been tried before.


Question: What do you see as our 1-2 most critical challenges?

Nita: We're losing practitioners because we are not addressing their needs. How do we get them the information that they need to tackle new positions and new jobs?

Dennis: The exodus of so many engineers in such a short period of time is a source of concern. How can we use the volunteer capacity to try and convince them that they can make a difference in helping to meet IEEE-USA's vision?

Tom: We need to draw in new membership but also challenge the current ones.