MISSISSIPPI SECTION IEEE REPORT                                April 2, 2002

At the 25 October 2001 meeting of the IEEE Mississippi Section the
following members were nominated for officers in the year 2002:
Dr. Ray Franco, Chair; Dr. Andy Harrison, Vice Chair; Mr. Lee Hall,
Secretary; Mr. Joe Savage, Treasurer; and Mr. John Marshall, PACE
Chair. The October meeting was hosted by Smart/Synch Metering
Solutions in Jackson with 16 members and guest attending. At the 29
November 2001 meeting, there were no new nominations for officers, and
the members nominated at the October meeting were elected. The
November meeting was hosted by Walt Holifield Engineering – Rapid
Prototyping with an attendance of 21 members and guest. As is
customary, the Mississippi Section of the IEEE did not meet in the
month of December.

On 22 January 2002 the Mississippi Section of the IEEE toured
Howard-Industries Magnetic Ballast Plant in Mendenhall, MS with 22
members and guest attending. The 21 February 2001 meeting was a
National Engineers Week Luncheon in Vicksburg, MS with approximately
90 people attending. Sponsors of the Luncheon and the activities
during the week were: ASCE, ASME, MES (Mississippi Engineering
Society), SAME (Society of American Military Engineers), and IEEE.
The guest speaker Dr. Don Trotter is a member of the IEEE MS
Section. Dr. Ray Franco, the MS IEEE Chair, introduced Dr. Trotter. Dr
Ray Franco and Dr. Barry McCleave were speakers during the week at the
Vicksburg High. Mr. Joe Savage, IEEE MS Section Treasurer was
publicity chair for all events during the week.  The 21 March 2002
meeting was held at Piccadilly’s Northpark Mall with Mr. Butch Foster
of AquaDyn Technologies speaking on Water Management Systems (17
people attended).

The IEEE MS Section has tentative plant tours and/or talks for all
planed meeting months in calendar year 2002. See our website:
https://ewh.ieee.org/r3/mississippi/

Goals for the year are better communications with the membership by
use of our website, email and newsletters and more participation
having interesting, technical, and social meetings throughout the
state. We plan to have more joint meetings with other engineering
societies.  To date, considerable progress has been made on our
website with it being completely re-written, and updated every
month. Next on our list, is the established of an email list from the
IEEE white and pink files, and possibly transferring the database to
Microsoft Access? Finally, we hope to publish our first newsletter
this summer. During the first three months of this year, we have had
two members receive senior member status, and we hope to see further
increases here.



Ray Franco, Ph.D., PE
IEEE MS Section Chair, 2002