Huntsville Section Southeastcon 2000 Report

James W. Anderson, Chair, James-W-Anderson@ieee.org


We normally hold 24 administrative meetings a year. We submitted our Officers Report, Meeting Report and Finance Report on time.


We are revised our bylaws a couple of years ago and are on a calendar year basis. We are reviewing them again in light of the new suggested bylaws and see some things we will probably incorporate. The chairs of the two student branches are voting members of our ExCom, but they do count in the pool that is used to determine how many people are needed for a quorum. This way the section is not penalized in getting a quorum during the summer when they are not in town.


Mr. Steven Johnson’s nomination as a Fellow of the IEEE was accepted. He will be officially inducted in May at the International Radar Conference. Dr. Bob McMillan, also a Fellow of the IEEE, was Steve’s main sponsor and we thank Bob for all the work he put into the nomination process. We are preparing to submit three more Fellows Nominations.


Our Graduates Of the Last Decade (GOLD) Committee had a very successful kickoff meeting, which is being followed up with several training meetings (personal finance and project management). This success was due to the enthusiasm and hard work of our co-chairs Sonya Hutchenson and Jan Heering, and the very generous cooperation of ADTRAN Corp. who hosted the kickoff meeting.


We held our 18th annual IEEE Computer Fair in February 1999 and this year’s fair will be held on 8/25-26. Scott Trites and a small group of dedicated volunteers have handled this for the last seven years. We owe them a large debt of gratitude for all the work they have put in over the years and all the money they have raised for section activities.


We participated in the local Engineers Week Banquet. We presented the following awards:

  1. Outstanding Engineer to Mr. Larry Fullerton, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Time Domain Corporation.

  2. Outstanding Educator to Dr. Trent Montgomery of AA&MU.

  3. Outstanding Service to Scott Trites of Huntsville Utilities.


The section has converted from a hard copy newsletter to an Internet based version. We are using a combination push-pull process. We e-mail a brief summary of the newsletter with a link to our web site (https://home.att.net/~albanes/ieeehsv.htm ). This is saving the section a substantial amount in postage and printing costs, and allows us to communicate in a timelier manner. Venkata Atluri, Willy Albanes and Merv Budge have put a lot of work into this project. Jim Kennedy donated a copy of Office 2000 Professional for use in preparing the HTML version of the newsletter. The accuracy of the e-mail addresses that we receive from IEEE HQ is a continuing problem as well as the rate of change of the addresses. We are pushing IEEE aliases at every opportunity and the response has been good.


We are the local sponsor of AUTOTESTCON 2002 and Ms. Pat Griffin is the General Chair of the conference.


We sponsored a number of the awards for engineering related projects at the North Alabama Science and Engineering Fair and the Alabama State Science and Engineering Fair. A number of these young people went on to the National Science Fair. The section also supplied some of the judges for the local fairs. Eric Grigorian carried out this project.


We have had more, better and better attended Section Meetings this year, also due to the hard work of Eric Grigorian. We have had better publicity for these meetings and our technical society meetings in the paper, on the radio and the section’s e-mail list and web site. Bill Barksdale has put a lot of work into this project.


In 1999 we had another active year with the Control Systems Society due to the work of Dr. Yuri Shtessel. This year Dr. Dave Hampton is continuing with another active year. We have also started to revitalize the Aerospace Electronics Society under the leadership of Dr. Kaveh Heidary.


Rodney Fanner reactivated the Student Branch at AA&MU and we continue to provide support to the UAH Student Branch headed by Minhaz Siddiqui.


The Awards Committee has nominated 11 people for Millennium Medals to headquarters for service to the section. We also intend to issue a number of Millennium Certificates to other members for service to the section. These will be awarded at the Professional of the Year Banquet on June 1. We will honor Mr. Roy Nichols, Founder and Vice Chairman of the Board of Nichols Research, as our Professional of the Year. Will Preussel and Willy Albanes have put a lot of work into this project. The Awards Committee has also sponsored a number of members for Senior Grade. At least two have been approved and several others have been submitted.


As part of the Sections Millennium Celebration and to support the Awards Committee we have been putting together a section history. Anita Baker-Lopez and Charles Wesley Smith, potential members, have put a lot of work into this project.


I represented us at SoutheastCon ’99 and Sections Congress ’99. There were many good workshops and I got to meet most of the major Region 3 volunteers and the IEEE staff people. The highlight was meeting other section leaders from around the world. It is amazing how many of our problems are common.


Thanks also to Sonya Hutchenson for recording all our official actions and to Matthew Vega for keeping the books and paying our bills in a timely manner.