President's Column
January 2003

Greetings to U.S. IEEE members. I look forward to serving as your president in 2003.

It looks like our U.S. IEEE membership of about 235,000 is probably only about 25 percent of the market. So my first request is that you join the IEEE Member-Get-A-Member program and sign up at least one new member.

With the terrible events of September 11, 2001, the outlook for the U.S. has drastically changed. We now have a frightful and fanatical enemy. Our government is setting up a homeland security force to help protect us, and IEEE-USA’s Technical Policy Council will assist in the effort.

The 9/11 events affected us all. The following week, my aunt and uncle, Anne and Bert Souther, were brutally murdered in their La Habre, Calif., home. The murders are still an unsolved mystery. So, while it’s very important for IEEE-USA to plan and support professional careers, it means little if terrorists and other criminals threaten our personal security.

In 2003, we will also look at heroes within IEEE. Our first retreat will be held at the Thomas Edison Museum, named in honor of the man who helped found IEEE. We will also celebrate Pearl Harbor Day there with a visit to meet George Elliott, Jr., an SCR-270B radar operator at the Opana Point (Hawaii) radar site, which first detected the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. We helped establish the site as an IEEE Historical Milestone during National Engineers Week, 2000.

We hope to hold IEEE-USA Operating Committee meetings at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. IEEE has student branches at each one.

In late March, we will hold a Professional Development Conference and IEEE-USA Leadership Workshop at the Seattle Airport Hilton. Please consider sending a PACE representative from each section.

Our CARE program is a grassroots effort to urge U.S. IEEE members to visit their congressional representatives in their home district.

Unemployment among U.S. engineers has climbed steadily over the past several years. We presented our concerns over this and other workforce issues at the National Academies’ Pan-Organizational Summit on U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce in November.

We will lobby Congress to restore the yearly 65,000 H-1B visa limit (now 195,000) to help U.S. engineers and computer scientists with increased employment opportunities. And we hope to re-establish IEEE-USA employment assistance at the Section level.

Log on to the IEEE-USA Web site (www.ieeeusa.org) and take a look at our ongoing activities and decide how you, our most valued asset, can help us help you.
 

Note to Editors: Please feel free to adapt this IEEE-USA President's Column for use in your local IEEE print and electronic publications. For more information, please contact Chris McManes at c.mcmanes@ieee.org.