From: DCC4@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 1999 11:26 AM
To: d.green@ieee.org; r3-excom1999@ieee.org; sec-r03@ieee.org
Subject: Director's March Report

To:  Region Executive Committee, Region 3 Committee
      Secretary Dave Green
Fr:  Dale Caston, Director

Our Region 3 Meeting is in Lexington, Kentucky this year.  The Lexington
Section and the Student Branch at the University of Kentucky are hosting
SoutheastCon '99 and our thanks go out to Don Hill, his committee, the Section
and the Student Branch for all the hard work and effort to make this
conference a success.  For those who have been part of conference committees
know success just does not occur without good planning, dedicated volunteers
and diligent effort.  

One of the tasks facing  IEEE is to have all sections elect officers on a
fiscal year basis.  Presently, 67% (29 of 43 sections) have officer terms that
run from July to June.  Some of the advantages of all sections having officer
terms to agree with the calendar year are:

1.  The financial and meeting section reports are done on a calendar year.  In
cases where a new secretary and/or treasurer are elected in mid-year, there
can be difficulty in getting the necessary information to complete the reports
at year end.
2.  All Area, Council and Region committee chairs are elected or appointed on
a calendar year basis.  When all sections convert to calendar year, then the
entire region will be in sync.
3.  There is an Organization Roster published by IEEE for each Region.  Today,
this must be published two times a year.  When all sections are on a calendar
year, it will necessary to print this booklet only once per year thus saving
clerical time, printing and mailing costs.  

Our goal is to have all sections change to a fical year by 2001.  You, as
leaders in our Region are encouraged to help the sections accomplish this
task.  It may require that the section by-laws be changed.  To help in this
undertaking, the Regional Activities Staff is preparing a template that may be
used to cover the important changes.  Each section has the right to customize
and adopt their own by-laws to meet the needs of that particular section.  To
transition to a calendar year, there are two options.  One is to ask the
existing officers to serve an additional six months and the other is to elect
the new officers with the agreement that they would serve for 18 months so
that the section could convert to the calendar year.  Each of the 29 sections
are requested to look at this matter seriously, make the change and attempt to
make the fiscal year basis work.

As always at SoutheastCon we look forward to the Awards Luncheon where our own
members are recognized for outstanding achievement.  John Twitchell and his
committee have a good group of award recipents that will be honored this year.
Also, Pat Donohoe, Student Activities Chair,  will be presenting awards to the
outstanding students who win the various student competitions such as
Hardware, Software, Student Paper and Webpage.  Next year SoutheastCon is
planned for Nashville, Tennessee.

Our Region has one of the best if not the best Newsletter when compared to the
other 9 regions worldwide. Thanks are extended to Brian Skelton as editor and
to the Executive Committee for furnishing articles for each issue.  Also,
thanks go out Jim Howard who mailed two of the three issues of the Newsletter
to all Region 3 IEEE members for the past few years.

Dale Caston