From: Anderson, James [JANDERSON@hnt.wylelabs.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 1999 11:58 PM To: sec-r03@ieee.org; r3-excom1999@ieee.org Subject: Huntsville, AL Section Report The new 1999 officers are as follows: Jim Anderson, Chair Eric Grigorian, Vice Chair Sonya Hutchinson, Secretary Matt Vega, Treasurer Willy Albanes, Member at Large Jim Kennedy, Member at Large The Section, GOLD Committee, Control Systems Society, Aerospace and Electronics Society, and Computer Society held 24 meetings and our annual Computer Fair in 1998. At the 1999 Engineers Week Banquet we presented three awards: The Outstanding Engineer of the Year - Michael J. Moody of Dynetics. Outstanding Service - Dr. Haik Biglari of Fairchild Controls. Outstanding Educator - Dr. Yuri B. Shtessel of UAH At the 1999 Professional of the Year (PoY) Banquet, sponsored by the Huntsville Association of Technical Societies, James W. Anderson of Wyle Laboratories, will be recognized as the Huntsville Section's PoY. The Section supports the North Alabama Science Fair and the Alabama State Science Fair by supplying judges, certificates and monetary awards for engineering related categories. Since we have a very tight budget this year we are only able to provide $500 in prize money. The Section also subsidizes part of the Student Branches expenses to attend Southeastcon. We are starting to convert from a paper based newsletter to an Internet newsletter and are hoping to get a lot of suggestions from other sections that have accomplished the transition. We want to improve communications and reduce costs. We are also looking at other ways to increase our publicity. Like most sections we are having problems getting the members to participate. With all the down sizing and re-engineering of companies, the engineers have less discretionary time. We are running a series of articles in our newsletter on the activities of the section and inviting members to volunteer their services. We are looking at a number of ways to open up the awards process and solicit nominations from a larger portion of the membership and their employers. In order to streamline our operation we are formulating a Yearly Planning Calendar listing yearly activities, when and by whom they need to be accomplished. We are also preparing a monthly calendar and a long range calendar. The Section will be co-sponsoring AUTOTESTCON 2002.