IEEE-USA President's Column

 

 
President's Column
January 2006

Welcome to the New Year, fellow U.S. IEEE members. I hope you enjoyed time with family and friends, while renewing your spirit.

In my years of service, I have kept the IEEE-USA mission close to my heart. As your 2006 IEEE-USA President, it is my guiding purpose. Our mission is “to recommend policies and implement programs specifically intended to serve and benefit the members, the profession and the public in the United States in appropriate professional areas of economic, ethical, legislative, social and technology policy concern.”

To me, our mission translates into four primary areas of focus:

• Ensuring that U.S. technology policy enhances America’s future and protects American workers
• Developing new tools and improving our career resources for U.S. IEEE members
• Supporting and publicizing valuable continuous education opportunities for our members
• Promoting IEEE fields of interest needed by the next generation of technical professionals

In 2006, we have a prime opportunity to act on our first focus, technology policy. As a participant in the National Innovation Initiative, IEEE-USA will urge Congress to pass comprehensive legislation designed to promote U.S. innovation and competitiveness, starting with the National Innovation Act (S. 2109), introduced this past December by Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.).

In addition, IEEE-USA will continue to support immigration reforms that enable the United States to admit foreign technical talent as new Americans rather than as “guest workers,” and has endorsed legislation designed to reform the flawed H-1B visa program. The Defend the American Dream Act (H.R. 4378) seeks to strengthen safeguards for affected workers, redress the weak prevailing wage requirement, require employers to actively admit American workers, as well as improve H-1B program administration and enforcement in order to reduce fraud and abuse.

We applaud Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) for sponsoring this bill, and IEEE-USA will support this legislative effort to protect U.S. IEEE members and their careers. Other IEEE-USA policy priority issues for 2006 include retirement security, e-health-related measures, and the planned revamping of the U.S. patent system.

IEEE-USA will support our second focus by continuing to enhance the Employment Navigator with its several-million job listings, resume tools and other resources. Each day, the Employment Navigator collects more than five-million job leads from more than 170,000 Web sites, and consolidates them into a single, searchable database. As many of you already know, nearly one-third of the jobs available to subscribers are not found on public job boards.

We will also continue to promote the IEEE-USA Career and Employment Strategies Forum. With more than 2,300 members, this thriving online forum provides discussion areas, job opportunities and other useful information for members who wish to communicate and collaborate on career topics. The Consultants Database and Salary Service are also slated for major upgrades this year.

The IEEE-USA Employment Navigator complements the IEEE Job Site, which provides access to more than 3,000 employers who are specifically looking to recruit from IEEE members. The nearly 41,000 registered members can view and apply for nearly 10,000 jobs at the site. This resource has raised approximately $925,000 in revenue for the IEEE, which, in turn, allows us to offer more services to IEEE members.

Turning to continuous education, IEEE-USA is working with the IEEE Educational Activities Board to make available the best of the IEEE’s educational content through one-hour online learning modules. Expert Now IEEE contains the latest information on emerging technologies and seminal works presented at the highest-rated IEEE conference tutorials, short courses and workshops. These unique, Web-based courses run the technical gamut from aerospace to vehicular technology, and are designed to save members time and travel costs.

In addition, IEEE-USA is offering 29 online “soft skills” courses with partner AchieveGlobal. And we’ll continue to provide our members with P.E. Exam review courses in the months ahead.

Further, IEEE-USA is joining with IEEE Educational Activities in promoting the IEEE Education Partners Program in which IEEE members have access to some 6,000 courses from more than a dozen providers to help members meet their continuing education, certificate and graduate needs. And savings on this program could easily offset the cost of member dues.

Finally, in 2006, IEEE-USA will be sponsoring the expansion of the IEEE Teacher In-Service Program (TISP) into Massachusetts and Indiana. And we’ll be leveraging our volunteer networks to support the future of the profession by working with IEEE Educational Activities to promote pre-university initiatives such as TISP and the K-12 student mentoring program.

Both provide useful resources for U.S. IEEE members to bring technology education into their local schools. I commend and support these committed individuals who strive to enhance the level of technological literacy, science and mathematics among pre-university educators and their students.

We must all renew our commitment to support the IEEE-USA mission and our careers by making our voices heard in Washington as well as in our local schools.

I look forward to sharing this exciting year ahead with you. Please share your ideas with me at r.wyndrum@ieee.org.

Updated:  15 May 2007
Contact: Pender M. McCarter, p.mccarter@ieee.org