Join us on Tuesday, July 26, at 6 PM for our annual presentation and discussion of engineering ethics. C. W. Clark will discuss the Texas Professional Engineering Practice Act and rules concerning the practice of engineering and professional engineering licensure. His discussion will include training requirements for maintaining your PE license. Finally, he will discuss the compliance issues and their consequence. This training will qualify for ethics continuing education credits. Continuing Education certificates will be provided at the end of the class.

The Board employed Mr. Clark in February of 2004 as an Engineering Specialist and he was promoted to Director of Compliance & Enforcement in April of 2004. In addition to the Compliance & Enforcement Division, which includes both Policy Advisories and Enforcement, he supports and interacts with the Licensing Division and other functions of the agency. While providing engineering expertise to the Board and staff, he also participates in outreach programs to educate the public and licensed engineers on engineering matters pertaining to the Engineering Practice Act.

Before joining the State of Texas, Mr. Clark worked in private industry as an Electrical Engineer with Motorola, Inc. in Austin for 21 years, and eight years with Texas Instruments in Dallas. Mr. Clark is a BSEE graduate of Southern Methodist University and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). C. W. and his wife, Jan, have two adult children and live in the Austin area. C. W. and Jan have also been active with foster parenting and over the last 28 years have had the great pleasure of fostering more than 225 infants and children.

Please RSVP to Stacy Smith via email or phone, 512-232-6103, and see the meeting announcement for additional details.

Join us on Tuesday, August 23, for Tom Dittlinger's presentation on Medium Voltage Drivers. Tom's presentation will cover VFD installation and grounding for low voltage drives, VFD medium voltage and low voltage drive technologies now and in the future, and VFD harmonic issues and solutions.

Tom Dittlinger is the Senior Drives Area Manager from the Carrolton (Dallas) office of Rockwell Automation; he has 32 years experience with drives with Reliance, Allen Bradley and Rockwell Automation. The territory he is responsible for covers is most of Texas and Oklahoma. He holds a BS in EE, from University of Houston and has 32 years experience working with Rockwell Automation, Allen Bradley, and Reliance Electric.

Please RSVP to Stacy Smith via email or phone, 512-232-6103, and see the meeting announcement for additional details.

On Tuesday, June 26, at a delicious dinner courtesy of 3M, Bill Taylor, Product Development Manager, presented a lecture at Medium Voltage Theory and Products, covering medium voltage theory and products. His presentation addressed theory of voltage stress. This was followed by an open discussion on splicing and terminating of medium voltage shielded cable led by Mario Hernandez and tours of the 3M high voltage and contamination labs.

We thank 3M for their generous efforts in making this event successful.

On Tuesday, May 24, M. N. (Mike) Filley of Square-D Company presented Critical Power Distribution Systems. Mike's presentation discussed some of the latest distribution systems, their pros and cons, and the difficulties in achieving the "perfect" system--reliable, selective, safe and cost-effective.

We appreciate Mike taking the time to help us understand the principles of critical power systems that he obviously knows so well and for sending us the presentation slides for those that did not attend as well as those who would like to further study Mike's presentation. Thank you Mike.

On Tuesday, April 26, Mark Hunter presented a summary of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, distributed control systems (DCS), and programmable logic controllers (PLC). His talk included technologies, advantages, and disadvantages. Mark showed how hybrid control system architecture fills the gap between DCS and PLC systems. He concluded his presentation with an overview of system security issues, including physical security, control system security, network security, and integration legal mandates. He was also kindly provided a copy of his presentation slides. Mark is with Invensys Process Systems

We really appreciate Mark traveling from Chicago to for this presentation. Thank you.

2005 National Electric Code ® Changes--Thank you

A big thank you to James Stallcup, Sr., President of the Electrical Section of NFPA, Chairman of Code Making Panel 14, and principal member of several technical committees, for conducting the February seminar on the 2005 changes to the National Electric Code®. Here are a couple photos of the event.

Also a round of thank you applause to our sponsors, without whom this seminar would not have taken place.

• Siemans Energy & Automaton, Inc.
• Square D--A brand of Schneider Electric
• 3 M Electrical Products
• Toshiba
• APC

Finally thank you to the over 100 participants who helped make this seminar a big success.

Jules Campbell was kind enough to send us the slides for his and Walter Hornaday's fascinating presentations on wind power from February 2004.