IEEE - Piedmont Section Report October 2006 Section Officers: Chair: Robert Scruggs r.scruggs@ieee.org Vice Chair: Jerry Clark jclark89@hotmail.com Sec/Treas: Louis Hapeshis hapesl@ieee.org Membership Development: Allen Thomas a.thomas@ieee.org Professional Activities: Adib Chebli a.chebli@ieee.org Student Activities: John Komo john.komo@ces.clemson.edu Educational Activities: Lee Stogner l.stogner@ieee.org Newsletter Editor: Mark Stokes m.stokes@ieee.org Awards: Randy Collins randy.collins@ces.clemson.edu 2006 has been a successful year for the Piedmont Section. At this time, we have held 6 regular meetings with 3 more planned for the year and we have had 3 Executive Committee meetings. We are making an effort this year to get our members more involved with engineering students, and therefore the January and February meetings were geared toward university student participation. Additionally, the November meeting will be held at Clemson University where we will be sponsoring and helping to judge the Senior Project competition for the Electical and Computer Engineering Department. In December we plan to have a Holiday Celebration Dinner for our members. 2006 meetings included: January: We hosted our annual Student Paper Competition, complete with awards. The first place winner was invited to compete at the state level and at Southeastcon 2006. February: We held a networking dinner meeting to give engineering students the opportunity to meet and talk with working engineers about life and careers after college. March: "An Introduction to Arc Flash and Electrical Workplace Safety". The presentation described an Arc Flash Incident, showed examples, and identified some of the causes. There was a discussion of the steps involved in performing an Arc Flash Study, and of the personal protective equipment needed to work on equipment. Standards relating to Arc Flash were also introduced. April: "A Basic Introduction to Variable Speed Drives". A presentation of variable speed drives with explanation of how AC power is rectified into DC power which is switched out to the induction motor in square wave pulses that imitate alternating current allowing us to change the frequency and control motor speed. June: A local recruiting company spoke on managing careers in the engineering field. September: Larry Grogan, a financial planner recommended by IEEE's speaker program presented "Retirement Myths" which covered changes in retirement regulations and discussed specific financial planning strategies that can have a major impact on the value of your retirement assets. October: "Earthquake Engineering - Parallels to Electrical Engineering" an overview of the similarities behind state of the art earthquake engineering and electrical engineering fundamentals. This unusual perspective will demonstrate how "engineering first principals" can be used to better understand engineering challenges in widely different fields of practice. Other Activities: We have been providing support for local high school FIRST Robotics teams for several years now and plan to continue. Also, as in years past, the section provided some funding to the Clemson University Hardware Team for the competition at Southeastcon 2006. Mark Stokes attended the Region 3 meetings at Southeastcon as the Piedmont Section representative. The monthly Newsletter continues to be sent out via IEEE e-notice with a printed copy going to members without an email address. The Section WEB page was redesigned earlier this year and continues to be updated monthly. Area/Council question responses: Meetings involving interaction with students both at college and High School levels have worked particularly well for our section. In the past, plant tours have also been popular. Our biggest challenges continue to be lack of volunteerism and low meeting attendance. I feel that the best thing that the Piemont Section has done in the past few years is to renew our commitment to increasing our involvement with students. The financial planning speaker from our September meeting above is highly recommended. We would wecome any help or suggestions from the area / council or region 3 on ways to increase member involvement with the section. Respectfully submitted, Rob Scruggs 2006 Piedmont Section Chair