IEEE Western North Carolina Section Report March 2007

Section Officers:

Chair:             Jim Corr

Vice Chair:     A. J.  Burke

Secretary:      Jim Erickson

Treasurer:      Fred Orland

Section Committees:

Professional Activities PACE Chair:  Fred Orland

Membership Development Chair:  Jim Corr

2006 was a successful year. 

A.   Our section was honored by one of our members, Dr. Perry Sprawls, receiving the 2006 IEEE EAB “Meritorious Achievement Award in Continuing Education.”

B.   We held a Section Awards Banquet in December. 

Dr Perry Sprawls was the guest of honor.

Excellence in Education Awards were presented to:

Western Carolina University, WCU - for the dramatic improvement of the IEEE student branch.

University of North Carolina – Asheville, UNCA for the outstanding 2006 senior class student project.

Section members received various awards for their volunteerism and exceptional support of WNC section projects.

C.   We also conducted our strategic planning session in conjunction the section officers, the universities engineering departments and some of the section membership, and developed a list of section long term objectives, strategies and priorities.   

D.  Formed the WNC-LCN Consultants Network Affinity Group.

E. Attended SoutheastCon 2006 in Memphis and the R3 EXCOM meeting in Atlanta.

 Plans for 2007

We will attempt to implement our strategic plan and continue to conduct the various very successful programs we have developed, such as:

Student Activities:

1.  Engineering Career Round Table meetings at WCU and UNCA. 

2.  Preliminary and Final Student Project design reviews, section members are the review team.

3.  Student Project idea brainstorming sessions.

4.  Student branches have been very active and growing. We have excellent Student Branch Advisors. 

5.  IEEE WNC and UNCA Mechatronics Engineering Department will sponsor a local Pre-college Summer Robotics Workshop (Sumo-Bot Competition) this summer. This will be an expanded program this year

6.  We are working on developing an area wide regional pre-college robotics competition to complement the Summer Programs with year-round activities for students here in WNC in conjunction with the staff at UNCA.

Professional activities:

1.   Continued publication of a WNC section newsletter.

2.   Continued development of the WNC Local Consultants Network (LCN). Develop relationships with the various WNC area economic development activities and organizations.

3.   Continue to hold plant tours, technical and professional section meetings.

4.   AJ Burke, WNC section vice-chair will be presenting a technical paper at the SoutheastCon 2007 in Richmond. The paper is entitled: “Implementing an Outsourced Technology Infrastructure”

5. Attend R3 EXCOM meetings at SoutheastCon 2007 in Richmond.

 Our challenges are:

1.    Increasing IEEE section membership, especially with student chapters with the new EE programs at WCU and increasing enrollment in Mechatronics program at UNCA. 

2.    Finding good technical programs for section meetings.

3.    Increasing meeting attendance and volunteerism among the section membership.

Needs:

Continued IEEE support to provide packaged technical tutorials for presentation at the section level.

Submitted by,

 Fred Orland

WNC Section Treasurer,

Professional Activities PACE Chair,

Past Section Chair,

IEEE Western North Carolina Section

Email:  fredorland at ieee.org

Phone:  828-665-4761