President's Column
July/August 2003

Celebrating 30 Years of Professional Activities

IEEE-USA, created 30 years ago to promote the career and public-policy interests of the IEEE’s U.S. members, is an organizational unit of the IEEE. I’d like to highlight some of our professional activities on behalf of the IEEE’s 235,000 U.S. members.

Volunteer leaders serving on the IEEE-USA Board of Directors and committees work closely with IEEE-USA staff to represent what we feel are the best interests of our U.S. members. We know that with such a large and diverse membership, we can’t please everyone. But we hope the majority agrees with our positions and the direction we seek to lead the organization.

IEEE-USA’s position statements are passed by our Board of Directors and serve as the basis for our lobbying and public-relations efforts. IEEE-USA also acts as an adviser to Congress. For example, we led a technological and legislative briefing on nanotechnology for congressional staffers on Capitol Hill in June. Our volunteers visit Washington, D.C., and home-district congressional offices, and invite you to join us.

Last year we submitted an amicus curiae brief before the Supreme Court that served as the basis of its ruling in a landmark patent rights case. This year we filed another brief before the high court in support of reverse engineering.

IEEE-USA promotes engineering awareness and public understanding by actively participating in National Engineers Week each February. Next year we will spearhead the effort as the lead society, and will increase Future City Competition participation by sponsoring three additional teams’ trips to Washington for the national finals.

In the career-enhancement area, we’ll soon present the findings of our latest salary survey. With our most respondents ever, we believe the data is the best collected and analyzed. It serves as the basis of the new IEEE-USA Salary Database. We’re also offering online leadership courses for the first time. For more information, visit our careers page at http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/.

The depth of IEEE-USA activities cannot be summarized in this short space, so I recommend you visit our homepage at http://www.ieeeusa.org/. I also encourage you to vote in the upcoming IEEE elections. The ballots include some very capable candidates for IEEE-USA offices of President-Elect and Member-at-Large.

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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.