PAOC Report
George F. McClure

1.  Organization

With the addition of Vice Chair Adeeb Hamzey, the Professional Activities Operation Committee is fully staffed:
·       PAOC Vice Chair - Adeeb Hamzey (adeeb_hamzey@dom.com )
·       Mentor  Jim Howard (j.howard@ieee.org)
·       Career Activities - Charles Lord (c.j.lord@ieee.org)
·       PACE Subcommittee- George McClure (g.mcclure@ieee.org)
·       Employment and Career Services Subcommittee Chair - David Macchiarolo (d.macchiarolo@ieee.org)
·       Educational Activities Subcommittee Chair - Mark McKeage (m.d.mckeage@ieee.org)
·       Student  Activities Liaison- Bruce Walcott (walcott@engr.uky.edu)
·       SPAC - Chris Ruffin (c.ruffin@ieee.org)
·       Technology Policy Subcommittee - John Montague (john.montague@ncr.com)
·       Awards Subcommittee - Thomas Bellarmine (tbellarm@cis.famu.edu)

2.  Activities

a.  Given the close calendar proximity of the IEEE-USA Leadership Workshop and Southeastcon, emphasis has been given to encouraging attendance of section PACE chairs or committee members at the Workshop for training, and deferring any Region 3 training until the fall.

b.  An SPAC coordinated by Chris Ruffin was held at the University of Central Florida on February 25, with 80 in attendance.  This was the first ever SPAC for UCF, and included a luncheon and three invited speakers.  The dean of the school of engineering provided the kickoff remarks.

    A budget request by students at Georgia Tech for $200 to support a SPAC was approved in February.

c.  Two Region 3 representatives participated in the Congressional Visits Day held March 3-4 along with some 200 representatives from 30 engineering and scientific societies.  The purpose was to meet with individual elected members or their staffs to encourage the Congress to preserve and improve the budgets for basic research and applied research.  Further letter-writing from other interested members would be helpful in supporting this goal, since the DoD budget request is down 15 percent for 2005, and down 11 percent for NASA aeronautical technology (where aircraft research is performed).  In addition, the Advanced Technology Program in the National Institute of Science & Technology is being zeroed out in the President's budget request.

d.  Updating of the roster of PACE and Section chairs has been accomplished in cooperation with IEEE-USA and Headquarters, which has been updating the geographic roster weekly with the changes sent in from this activity.

3.  Priorities

a.  Encourage the 35 percent of sections that lack a PACE chair to appoint one.  Past section chairs make excellent choices.

b.  Monitor the need for Employment Assistance at sections or by individual members.

c.  Develop outreach to Region sections through their PACE chairs to encourage awareness of the need for pre-college education improvements.  In connection with Public Information chair David Bower, mount a letter-writing campaign to get public attention through letters to newspaper editors.  U.S. competitiveness is adversely affected by the reduction in numbers of graduates in science and engineering, and this shortfall begins with equipping secondary school students with the math and science background necessary to pursue technical fields in college.