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DAN HOOLIHAN
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DAN HOOLIHAN
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Education, Education, and Education
Because I am President of the EMC Society, I get the opportunity to write a message to all our members with every EMCS Newsletter. This is a privilege that I look forward to and that I hope to take suitable advantage of.
My keyword for my two-year term (1998 and 1999) is Education.
The EMC Society is approximately 5000 members and we represent about 1.5% of the total IEEE membership. It is apparent to anyone who has spent some time in the field of electromagnetic compatibility engineering that a large part of our job is educating people to the “ins and outs” of EMC technology. We are constantly educating our fellow EMC personnel, the other electrical engineers in the IEEE (98.5% of the largest engineering professional organization in the world), the remaining electro-technology experts on the planet Earth, and the remaining members of the general population.
The formal education community (colleges and universities) are teaching more and more EMC principles either as part of a larger course or as a stand-alone EMC engineering course. Once a technical person starts working in the real-world, the opportunities for education may be presented as seminars and workshops by various sources. Most of these sources charge a price for selling their expertise and so the dollars per dB of knowledge can be fairly expensive.
The local EMC Chapters can provide an inexpensive solution to the education challenge by striving to put on a variety of educational opportunities to their members. The opportunities can range from a 1-hour session once a month to a full blown workshop with all home-grown speakers.
The once-a-month meetings of the local chapters are the most common form of on-going education. We should be considering expanding these meetings to 1/2-day and full day sessions and making sure that other members of the local section get invited to the educational sessions. On-going education of trained personnel is important to our industries and to our economy. We should be instrumental in aiding that training effort.
Take advantage of your expertise and volunteer to give training talks for your local EMCS Chapter. Encourage your local Chapter officers to plan local educational events with sufficient notice so that members of other Societies in your Section may attend and benefit from the home-grown EMC engineering expertise.
Dan
Hoolihan
President EMC Society
IEEE
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