The Eastern NC Section of IEEE is alive and well and has been very active. Our Communications, Power Engineering, and Computer Society chapters have been most active. We have a new Electromagnetic Compatibility chapter which was chartered in 1998. Our one inactive chapter, with the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, is struggling to get re-started in 1999. We have a goal of each active chapter having at least 6 meetings in 1999.

In 1998, we brought back our December Spouses and Awards banquet. This was very enthusiastically by our membership.

Special activities in our section have included the hosting in October of a statewide conference on the de-regulation of the power industry and extensive Engineers Week 1999 activity, including a booth at a local major mall. This booth is on display here at Southeastcon to help give other sections ideas for putting on local IEEE exhibits.

The section is adding two new positions - Public Relations Chairman and Social Activities Chairman. The hope is that the PR position will educate the community on engineering and the Social Activities position will increase member's enjoyment of IEEE and thus increase membership retention. These two positions are in addition to the new GOLD chair position that was established in 1998. Another goal of the section is to provide leadership and time management training to the officers. This training will be self-taught with books and also a leadership and team building retreat (part of a NC Council special project).

A major project underway for 1999 is a statewide conference on Pre-college Engineering education. Our section is striving to lay the foundation for a K-12 Outreach Program that is receiving state-wide attention from the state Department of Public Instruction, the local school systems (administrators and faculty) and the NC Governor's Office, who are co-sponsoring the event. Building on the start-up conference of the IEEE EAB's Pre-College Committee on Education (PCCE) held last year in Baltimore, this year's event takes on that conference's name, "Technology Learning Counts!" and will be known as TLC '99. This conference will also be the 45^th North Carolina Symposium and Exhibition.

Another exciting event that we are planning is a "road trip" to Cape Hatteras, where the tallest lighthouse on the east coast (194ft) is being prepared for moving inland. Although not an electrotechnology project, it is of great interest to us as North Carolinians and engineers and should be a fascinating trip. We are also planning an "insider's" tour of our local nuclear power plant later this spring.

The section is also planning to participate in the NC Adopt-A-Highway Program. This is a program to periodically clean up trash on a section of public highway, for which we receive public recognition in the form of a roadside sign. It is a very visible way of being involved with the community.

Thomas Powell
IEEE Eastern NC Section Chairman

Conference: Restructuring the Electric Utility Industry

Awards Banquet

Tour of CP&L Service Center

EMC Test Procedures of commercial Consumer Products

Tour of CP&L Solution Center

A History of Electromagnetic Compatibility Measurements

Protecting Your Phone & Data Equipment from voltage Surges

WebTV

1998 Winter Olympics Connectivity Solution

Field Testing of the X2 56kbps Modem

Internet Thruway

Overview of Network Resource Planning

Universal Serial Bus

Voice over IP