Student Activities Committee Excomm Report (4/04) Bruce L. Walcott (b.walcott@ieee.org) Trish Davis (pdavis@ieee.org) Southeastcon 2005 - Student Activities Update Next weekend, April 8-10th, is Southeastcon 2005! This year, the student portion of the conference is the result of Eric Ackerman's group of dedicated students and faculty volunteers from Nova Southeastern University. At the time of this report, 156 students from 39 schools have registered for the hardware contest and we have had a number of inquiries from student branches outside of Region 3 who want to come and watch. Paper Contest This year, the IEEE Region 3 Paper Contest has the following 10 entrants: Jennifer Van Dyke, FAMU-FSU Justin Woulfe, VMI Malic Dekkar, UCF Dean Lewis and Jeff McBride, VCU James Greco, UFL Peter Sahlstrom, GATech Landon Haywood, Hampton Vijay Ullal, Clemson Steve Reece, UK Gordon Duquensay, UTech URIAH MANDELKORN, ODU Joshua D. Holtgrewe, CBU The paper presentations by these students will occur April 9 from 8-noon in the Grand Ballroom, Salon C of the Fort Lauderdale Marina Marriott Please make every effort to stop by and listen to these presentations. We want to thank Dr. Pat Donohoe, Dr. Clayton Paul, and Dr. Mark Cambron for serving as our written judges. Hardware Contest This year's hardware contest is much more compact than that of last year. Robots (autonomous vehicles) must fit within a 6"x6"x8" square and the entire playing surface is a standard 4'x8' sheet of plywood. The contest is head-to-head with two vehicles navigating the playing surface simultaneously in an effort to retrieve balls from positions inside the opponents half of the board. These positions are not revealed until the time of the competition and--once revealed--schools will not be permitted to make changes to their designs or touch their robots with the exception of charging batteries. Complete rules can be found at: https://sec05.nova.edu/hardware_design.htm RSAC is extremely pleased that this year's contest will once again have a pre-college component as Dr. Numan Dogan pioneered last year. Dr. Phyllis Chasser has taken the lead in the Pre-College Program and has used the same format as the college hardware competition with slightly relaxed rules to encourage participation at the secondary education level. For the difference between the pre-college and college rules, see https://sec05.nova.edu/doc/PRECOLLEGE_RULES.doc Dr. Amon Seagull is heading up the Software (Programming) Contest this year. A change from previous year's contests is that this year's software contest is using the well-known and established ACM programming contest rules as guidelines. Details for these activities can be found on the student activities web page, https://sec05.nova.edu/programming.htm There will also be a web site and T-shirt contest at Ft. Lauderdale along with a reception and awards banquet on Saturday night. For a complete list of activities, please see: https://sec05.nova.edu/student.htm New Activities ============== In addition to disseminating the hardware rules for next year, the Branch Counselor and Branch Chair meetings will see the discussion of three new potential activities for next year: - Graduate Student Member Poster Exhibit - Region 3 Ethics competition - Region 3 Student Retreat (2nd annual) More details will be given on these prospective activities after the meetings in Ft. Lauderdale. Respectfully submitted, Bruce L. Walcott Trish Davis ___________________________________________________________________ NOTE NEW PHONE NUMBER Bruce L. Walcott, Associate Dean e-mail: walcott@engr.uky.edu College of Engineering Voice: (859) 257-1182 University of Kentucky FAX: (859) 323-4922 Lexington, KY 40506-0108 Web: https://www.engr.uky.edu/csl/