Virginia Mountain Section of the IEEE
Fall Activity Report for 2006

Section Officers:
Chair: James C. Squire, P.E., Ph.D., squirejc@vmi.edu
Vice Chair: Jan Helge Bohn, Ph.D.,   bohn@ieee.org
Sec/Treas:  Wilbur Dale, Ph.D.,      dalewn@vmi.edu

This report covers the reporting period following the SECon2006 report,
specifically, May through September 2006.

The section does not historically hold technical meetings over the
academic summer months of May through August, so this report is brief.
During the fall reporting period we held one social meeting (May, a
family-oriented tour of the Western Virginia Science Museum), two
administrative meetings (August to plan the fall semester’s events, and
prior to the September technical meeting), and one technical meeting
(September, joint with the American Chemical Society, topic: New
Technologies Employed in Baghouses).

The Computer Society held a one-day workshop on the Virginia Tech campus
titled “Virginia Nano-Computing Workshop”, with speakers from Virginia
Tech (VT), the University of Virginia (UVA), and Duke. It was
co-sponsored by VT’s ICTAS and ECE departments, as well as the Virginia
Commonwealth University and an NSF grant. Our Industry Applications and
Microwave Theory and Techniques chapters closed this year after three
consecutive years of being on probation and from lacking chairs.

Ed Tutle volunteered to start a Life Member Affinity Group in accordance
with a R3 directive, but was unable to garner a critical mass of
interested members from the 83 in our section. Instead he is currently
examining the feasibility of starting a Consultants Affinity Group.

Monthly technical and administrative meetings are scheduled for the
remainder of the year using the Roanoke Holiday Inn as a central site.
The monthly Newsletter was expanded to include job postings and the
Section webpage was updated.

The VMS election of officers occurs every November. This year Chris
Bonadeo is implementing a new web-based voting system to reduce mailing
costs and time overhead.

The primary challenges we face are member recruitment and participation.
We would like to have greater attendance at our meetings (currently
typically 20-30) as well as have more active student participation. An
inordinate amount of effort is being provided by a small core of
dedicated individuals instead of spreading tasks more widely among
volunteers. Specifically we are having difficulty attracting younger
members from industry and academia.

Respectfully submitted,

James C. Squire
2006 Virginia Mountain Section Chair
squirejc@vmi.edu
540-464-7548
Submitted to sec-r03@ieee.org