Eastern North Carolina Section Report To R3 EXCOM:

Apologies for the late submission, but I did not realize I needed to submit a
written report as well as a presentation at the Region 3 meeting. The
following is a summary of the section report I gave at the Region 3 meeting in
Orlando, FL on Saturday, March 17.

Member Engagement Activities:

1. Our first activity of the year was a leadership and officer introduction
dinner in January. The purpose of this event was to introduce the new section
officers and encourage section members to become active volunteers

2. We have increased coordination of section activities with student chapter
activities. Student chapter chairs have participated in section EXCOM
meetings, and have asked for assistance in finding speakers and planning
meetings.

3. We are using vtools web conferencing to enable more EXCOM members to
participate in EXCOM meetings. We plan to use virtual conferencing for section
meetings as well in the future.

4. We have built a new and more friendly website to enable members to learn
about section and chapter activities.

Section Activities Focused Outward:

1. We have partnered with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center to form an
Intellectual Exchange Group focused on health information technology and
biomedical engineering. This group holds quarterly meetings and includes
members of other technical and professional societies.

2. Section volunteers have participated in the nationwide MATHCOUNTS
competition, co-sponsored by the Professional Engineers of NC. Volunteers
serve as test scorers and proctors for middle school students.

3. We are in the process of forming a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics) committee to determine what levels of support are needed by
area K-12 schools in these areas. The goal is to have a plan in place to
support Engineering Week activities next February.

Barriers

1. Members' interests tend to be specialized in specific areas, and it is hard
to find a topic that attracts a large audience. Therefore we have tended to
have many small meetings, rather than a few large ones.

2. Industry makeup in the area has changed in the last few years, with a
reduction in telecommunications employment and an increase in biomedical
engineering, power engineering, and information technology.

3. Our section is geographically large and spread out, which makes it
difficult to serve members in remote areas.

Again, apologies for the late submission.

Respectfully Submitted,
Thomas C. Jepsen, Chair
IEEE Eastern North Carolina Section
tjepsen@ieee.org