A PUBLICATION OF THE PIEDMONT SECTION OF THE IEEE

December, 2002

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South Carolina Council
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Articles:
Message from the Chair : Next Meeting : Member Give-A-Meeting : IEEE-USA President : South Carolina Council Web Site : Officers

Happy Holidays!!

During the month of December is a great time to start thinking about your trip to Jamaica for SoutheastCon 2003. There are preparations that need to be made well in advance of the conference. While you can register for the conference via mail, I suggest you wait a few more weeks for the Region 3 SoutheastCon support committee to get their web page (and online registration) pages running (this should be ready be early January). Even though I don’t suggest registering for the conference quite yet, It is a good time to get reservations at the hotel and most importantly, get your Passport renewed! According to the state department, passport renewals (and first time applications) are taking longer than usual. You wouldn’t want to be waiting by the mailbox on Friday before the conference on a passport.

For information on this year’s conference (and always the upcoming/current conference), go to http://www.southeastcon.com. I look forward to seeing as many of you there that can make it.

I’d like to welcome Rob Scruggs and Andy Pang to the Executive committee this coming year. They were voted into the Treasurer and Secretary positions respectively by an overwhelming majority at the November meeting in Greenville.

This year it has again become apparent that a meeting at an established eatery will be the best plan for our holiday party. Last year’s meeting went well with quite a few members attending. This year I hope to have at least as many and hopefully more.

The meeting place will be "Just More Barbecue" in historic Pendleton, SC. Dress is casual and at least some of the cost of dinner will be provided by the section. We'll be expecting to see you there. As this is considered a social meeting, please feel comfortable bringing your whole family (I will be bringing my 7mo old son and my 2 yr old son, as well as my wife). We look forward to meeting and chatting with all of you. There will be live entertainment ("Tiger Junction" {probably bluegrass}).

Date: December 13, 2002
Place: Just More BBQ
1410 Cherry Street
Pendleton, SC
864-646-3674
For directions and a map:  http://www.justbarbecue.com

Time: 6:30 PM
Topic: Food, Fun, and Fellowship

Please email or call Mark Stokes with any questions or to RSVP.

We are still looking for members willing to present a topic at future Piedmont Section meetings. If you are interested, please contact an officer.

WASHINGTON (2 December 2002) - IEEE-USA President LeEarl Bryant pointed to recent sharp increases in engineering unemployment and declining real wages as serious threats to the long-term viability of U.S. engineering careers at the National Academies' Pan Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce last month.

Bryant expressed serious concerns about the potentially adverse, long-term effects of workforce utilization practices that are making engineering jobs less secure and engineering careers more tenuous than ever. She cited the increasing reliance by employers on temporary foreign workers, non-standard employment arrangements and outsourcing of engineering work to lower cost, offshore locations. Non-standard employment arrangements utilize contingent, part-time, or contract workers instead of regular, full-time employees to reduce labor costs and facilitate just-in-time delivery of high value-added products and services, Bryant explained.

Unfortunately, management's short-term emphasis on labor flexibility seems to be creating long-term disincentives to continuing participation by many of the nation’s best and brightest in America’s engineering enterprise, the IEEE-USA president said.

Many aspiring and experienced engineers, when confronted with the prospect of periodic unemployment and flat or declining real wages, are voting with their feet and opting for careers in fields that offer more long-term job security and higher real wages, fields such as business administration, law and medicine.

Other important issues highlighted by the IEEE-USA president included the need to: provide timely information on engineering labor market conditions; strengthen math and science education in grades K-12; expand engineering educational and employment opportunities for women, minorities, handicapped and older Americans; improve lifelong learning (continuing education) for practicing engineers and scientists; and reform the nation's educational and employment-based immigration system.

For the entire work, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POLICY/12nov02.pdf.

The 11-12 November invitational meeting was hosted by the National Academies' Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) and attended by representatives from more than 40 national organizations, including business associations, educational institutions, government agencies and professional societies. Its purpose was to enable stakeholders to identify causes and recommend solutions to problems affecting supply and demand for U.S. scientists and engineers. For more information on GUIRR, go to http://www7.nationalacademies.org/guirr.

The South Carolina Council of the IEEE has been working to create a web site that will support the professional and career needs of electrical engineers based in our state. The new web site contains important IEEE links, real time news feeds and a wealth of other links that will connect the engineer with technology and job related resources. The South Carolina Council of the IEEE invites all electrical engineers in the state to use this important resource and make it their start page each morning. The page can be found at, http://ewh.ieee.org/r3/south_carolina_council/.

Give it a try and let them know what you think.

Officer List:

CHAIRMAN Mark Stokes (864) 647-2065 m.stokes@ieee.org
VICE-CHAIRMAN
SECRETARY/TREASURER Nick Pasquerilla (864) 886-1771 n.pasquerilla@ieee.org
MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT Allen Thomas (864) 228-4322 a.thomas@ieee.org
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES Nick Pasquerilla (864) (864) 886-1771 n.pasquerilla@ieee.org
STUDENT ACTIVITIES Dr. John Komo (864) 656-5916 john.komo@ces.clemson.edu
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES Lee Stogner (864) 281-8276 l.stogner@ieee.org
NEWSLETTER EDITOR Mark Stokes (864) 647-2065 m.stokes@ieee.org
AWARDS Dr. Randy Collins (864)656-5920 randy.collins@ces.clemson.edu

Use this space to reach over 450 IEEE members in this section!!

The Piedmont section of the IEEE is still offering sections of its newsletter for advertising space. If you are interested in supporting this effort, please contact one of the officers listed above.

-Mark