January 5, 2009
To all Region 2 Officers and Section Chairs:
Welcome to IEEE for 2009! I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season and I wish you the best in the New Year!
I would first like to congratulate Ralph Ford of the Erie Section for his successful election to become Director-Elect for Region 2. Ralph will succeed me in 2011 and serve as Director in 2011-12. In the meantime, I have assured him that he will be plenty busy as Director-Elect these next two years (I know from experience!)
I would also like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the Region and myself, to publicly thank John Dentler for his tremendously successful tenure as Director for Region 2. In his two years, John lent us his experience and showed his great leadership in putting our Region both financially and functionally back on its feet. His will be very large shoes to fill! In addition to playing an active role as Past Director, John will also continue to serve IEEE as Vice Chair in Member and Geographic Activities (MGA). I would also be remiss if I did not also acknowledge John’s wife Katie, who did countless things behind the scenes to help make our organization work, and always managed to find the best out-of-way restaurants in the various cities we visited for IEEE Region and Board of Directors meetings (especially Louisville!!)
The overall objective of our Region 2 volunteer officer staff in 2009 is to acquaint ourselves as much as possible with the wide assortment of products and services that IEEE offers and makes available to its members, and to create a two-way conduit in which the Region serves to support our Sections with the communications, information, and tools it needs to implement and provide these products and services to their constituent members.
Our vision and goals will be to align our Region personnel and resources with the primary organizational tenets of IEEE-USA, MGA, and Educational Activities. I have made my Region Officer appointments to reflect this, resulting in several new positions (while combining and/or eliminating others). Each position carries the responsibility to learn and understand the potential of IEEE for the member in the given area and then to actively devise and implement a plan to demonstrate this capability/resource to our more than 30,000 members through our 20 Sections.
Our new organization chart is available for everyone to see on the Region 2 Website (visit the site often for any and all information!!). I do expect this organization to evolve over time, although I would like to keep the number of officers fairly consistent.
Great thanks and appreciation to all those who have served the Region as active volunteers in recent years, and welcome to all the new officers that have joined with us! I look forward to working with all of you this year!
Bill Walsh
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/2/Images/org_chart_09.gif
