IEEE Region 3 PACE Report George F. McClure 31 January 1999 1. Planning is underway for the 1999 IEEE-USA Professional Development Conference, to be held in Dallas, Texas, 3-6 September 1999. The program has been agreed to and accepted authors contacted. It is expected that the percent of GOLD attendees will increase further beyond the 70 out of 250 total attendees last year. 2. Tutorials and PACE leader training will take place on Friday, 3 September. 3. With the conference emphasizing the development of soft skills and career improvement aids, it is expected that employers will support attendance by many IEEE members. Section PACE leaders will be able to get support to attend from the section and region. 4. Last year's major initiative was taking a position on the H-1B skilled immigration quota lifting. The principal 1999 initiatives will be: * Social Security strengthening * Enhanced portability of defined benefit pensions * Expanded savings opportunities in other tax-deferred retirement programs, such as increasing ceilings for 401(k) contributions, easing of discrimination tests for salary reduction plans, and higher limits for IRA and Roth IRA contributions * Health care improvements, including faster movement to full deductibility of premiums by self-employeds * Repeal of Section 1706 treatment of consultants as employees and restoration of the Section 530 'safe harbor * Permanent extension of Section 127 for tax exclusion of employer-provided educational assistance and restoration of the exclusion for reimbursement for graduate courses for in-service engineers * Tracking and reporting on engineers' supply and demand, to offset further calls for immigration of young engineers while older experienced engineers are not able to find work after a mid-career downsizing * Continued visibility to problems of the older professional seeking a life-long career that does not end at forty * Development, with Education Activities, of further opportunities for continuing education through distance learning 5. The Harris Poll commissioned by AAES in July, to probe attitudes of the public toward engineers and engineering found that there is not a good comprehension among the general public of what some have called the "stealth profession," from which the public reaps the advantages of technology in their everyday lives but lack an appreciation of the people and processes that make those advances possible. Some of the PACE projects earlier identified have as a goal the diffusion of knowledge of what engineering comprises to the public at large, as well as an exposure to engineering principles and methodology by students who may later decide to follow an engineering career path. 6. The attitude of employers toward their engineers may also be short-sighted, in some cases considering personnel as expendable and not investing in skills upgrading for future company benefit. The win-win nature of cooperation between employers and engineering societies is most evident in the knowledge transfer that occurs at technical conferences, but through the changing focus of the PACE conference, soft skills can also be transferred. Tutorials and short courses, tailored to employers' needs, are another area of cooperation between industry and IEEE entities. The management skills and practice available to IEEE members through volunteer activities form another area where industry benefits from their engineers working in IEEE projects. 7. The job listing service continues to be one of IEEE-USA's most popular services. Its value can only increase in future years, as more retirees come back into the workforce to fill jobs on a part-time basis to alleviate personnel shortages. George F. McClure PACE Coordinator, Region 3