Maqsood Mohd
Associate Editor
Knowledge is power. And indeed education is the means to get the knowledge. To seek knowledge is a birth right of every human being – young and old alike. EMC professionals are included in this. It is never too late to learn and seek education. Education is a verb. Our goal is to become the premier education committee of the IEEE. This is your Committee. We are here to help you and support your education needs. We are striving to undertake unconventional and innovative means to achieve our goals. Help us help you better. Let me update you on activities of various subcommittees. We welcome your help and support that you may be able to provide to any of our subcommittees. Please feel free to contact any of the subcommittee Chairs.
The Seattle Symposium is now behind us and it was the best yet for educating and enriching the EMC professionals. The Seattle Symposium Committee deserves thanks and appreciation for the job well done. At this symposium, the Education and Student Activities Committee achieved great success in several areas. In the following paragraphs I have highlighted some of the events that took place that you may find of interest.
It was another landmark year for the Fundamentals Tutorials. Although the tutorials are primarily targeted for the entry-level engineers in the EMC field, quite a few seasoned engineers also enjoy brushing-up on concepts that they might not have used in a while. This year several noted experts from several organizations provided the tutorial material to help better understand EMC concepts and to better design systems from an EMC point of view. One highlight of the session was Dr. Howard Johnson bridging the gap between the EMC and the signal integrity worlds.
If attendance is any measure of success and popularity, the Fundamental Tutorials were very successful. Throughout the day on an average there was an impressive attendance of about 400 participants. Thanks to all the speakers and the attendees who made the Fundamentals Tutorials a great success. The tutorial subcommittee is busy planning for another exciting and informative session during the Washington DC Symposium in August 2000. If you would like to propose a topic or a speaker for the Washington DC Symposium, email your comments and ideas to mohd@eglin.af.mil.
This is probably the most popular and “educational” activity we do as a committee. A variety of EMC concepts are demonstrated experimentally during the symposium to educate the symposium attendees. For three main days of the symposium more than 32 experts demonstrated 29 EMC concepts that sometimes might be classified as abstract or black magic. Many a happy soul was pleased to learn these concepts during these demonstrations. Their doubts changed into convincing beliefs.
There were at least three noteworthy highlights during this year. We had presenters from around the world, a demonstration of corrosion that promotes EMI problems, and a demonstration of EM modeling and simulation examples. Our thanks go to Andy Drozd and Larry Cohen for putting together a fine demonstration program. Our thanks are also due to very supportive vendors like HP, Tektronix, Fluke, Phillips, EMCO, and Amplifier Research, among others who donate their equipment during the symposium for this “educational” cause. If you would like to demonstrate an experiment or demonstrate an EMC concept at the next symposium in Washington D.C., please contact Andy at andro1@aol.com.
For detailed information on the demonstrations, please refer to the article by Andy Drozd on page 26.
As during the past several years, Dr. James Whalen conducted the workshop for engineers and technicians who are preparing to take the National Association of Radio and Telecommunications Engineers (NARTE) examination to certify as EMC engineers and technicians. This year David Case assisted Dr. Whalen. David Case is co-chair of the NARTE subcommittee.
At the NARTE examination on Friday, 38 engineers and technicians sat for the exams. The word from NARTE is that 65% of the participants passed the exams. Our congratulations to all the successful applicants, and welcome to the ranks of certified NARTE professionals. Our thanks to Dr. James Whalen for championing the cause of “preparing for the NARTE exams,” and his able co-host, David Case.
John Howard heads the university grant committee. This year his committee has been successful in finding a winner for this grant. John says that his committee’s workload has increased multifold. This year we had responses from around the world requesting the grant money. The grant is provided to an institution that is on the verge of offering an EMC course. The grant money is used as seed money to start an EMC course as an established part of the curriculum in the Electrical Engineering department. The grant is open to all universities in the world. For more details contact John Howard at jhoward@svpal.org. This year’s winning school is the University of Michigan at Dearborn.
Professor Antonio Orlandi is the Chair of this subcommittee. The mission of the university survey committee is to survey the universities and collect data about the EMC course offering, student population, modeling and simulation usage, etc. The data collected will help EMC-S and its members in various ways. Information will be useful for prospective students, industry, and employers. If you have not already done so, please, complete an online survey by going to the website https://dau.ing.univaq.it/art. If you know of a school or a college that has not participated in the survey, please encourage them to complete an online survey.
Dr. William Croisant of TC-7 proposed a joint venture between the Education Committee and TC-7 in the form of a student design contest. The contest is to design an EMC solution as part of the design of a circuit. The details are being worked out. The subcommittee chair is Ahmad Fallah, an able graduate student of a very able professor, Bob Nelson of North Dakota State University. If you have an interest in fame and glory, then contact Bill at w-croisant@cecer.army.mil or Ahmad at afallah@pheointl.com. This is an exciting area to be in. This effort has the potential of becoming the hallmark of how different technical committees, the industry, and academia can work together.
Dr. Jim Drewniak is heading up this effort. The Experiments Manual published by the Education and Student Activities is on the web site at: https://emclab2.ee.umr.edu/files/EMCman./pdf. If you have an Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download the entire manual from this site. If you don’t have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, it can easily be downloaded from the site: www.adobe.com.
Jim is looking for a volunteer who can do the follow-up work of soliciting and arranging the new experiments. If you are interested in broadening your career horizons, contact Jim or any other officer of the Education and Student Activities Committee.
Andy Drozd is the Chair of this subcommittee. This committee is an adjunct to the life-long learning committee. This committee is examining the development of products such as Introduction to Antennae, and Introduction to EMC.
Mike Bogusz is the Chair of this subcommittee. The mission of this committee is to reach out and touch some students (in fact, all students). Primarily, the focus is on working with student chapters in four areas: The Awareness of EMC, Student Paper Contest, The President’s Memorial Award, and the Design Contest.
The task of this committee is to produce educational material in appropriate and useful medium to the EMC-S membership. Dick Ford is the Chair of this committee. He will welcome any help you can provide him in this task. What we do in this committee will have a far-reaching impact in the 21st century.
Some changes have occurred during the Seattle Symposium. Contact any one of the following to become a part of the ongoing innovation in EMC engineering through education.
Student Activities
Mike Bogusz,
m.bogusz@ieee.org
NARTE BOD Liaison
David Case,
dcase@texlon.com
Experiments Manual II
Jim Drewniak,
drewniak@ece.umr.edu
Vice Chair & CEPC
Andy Drozd,
andro1@aol.com
Demonstrations
Andy Drozd & Larry Cohen,
cohen@radar.nrl.navy.mil
Student Design Contest
Ahmad Fallah,
afallah@pheointl.com
Video Productions
Dick Ford,
dford@radar.nrl.navy.mil
University Grant
John Howard,
jhoward@emcguru.com
Tutorials
Maqsood Mohd,
mohd@eglin.af.mil
University Survey
Antonio Orlandi,
orlandi@electtrica.ing.uniromal.it
NARTE
Jim Whalen & David Case,
jjw4@ece.umr.edu
Life Long Learning
Maqsood Mohd,
mohd@eglin.af.mil
I would like to express my personal thanks and appreciation for each of these officers who tirelessly work throughout the year to bring the very best in EMC education materials, workshops, demonstrations, and tutorials to every symposium and to all the members of the EMC profession. When you email them, contact them, or see them during a symposium, please express your appreciation for their volunteering valuable time for the EMC-S and the Education and Student Activities Committee.