1. Final Message From Jeff

The following is a message from Jeff Friedhoffer.

This is my final letter for the newsletter.

A very Happy New Year to all! Hope everyone had a good holiday season and are looking forward to the New Year and the opportunity to make advances in your chosen field.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the opportunity to serve as the Chair of the Baltimore Section over the last two years. This has been a rewarding experience and I would like to encourage all of you to become active in a technical chapter or the section. We can never have too may volunteers.

My thanks goes to the members of the executive committee to working so hard to make this an outstanding section, Brian Sequeira, as my Vice Chair, Boris Gramatikov as the Secretary, and Bob Cuellar as the Treasurer. Thanks also to Ron Aloysius for writing the newsletter, John Dentler for always being there when needed for whatever was needed,

Neville Jacobs for running the Robot Competition year after year, Vil Arafiles for sponsoring numerous Senior Members, Chris Nemarich for organizing a wonderful Centennial Celebration, Carole Carey for liaison to the Engineers Club, Tom Patton and Dick Schaffer for organizing the annual chapter chairs dinner, Joe Pollitt for conducting the annual audit of our books, Tina Kohler for being the representative to the Joint WIE chapter and the organizer and flack catcher for our own WIE chapter. The chapter chairs are acknowledged for their outstanding efforts in supporting the technical interests of our members, Dave Boyd of the Annapolis Sub-section, Tom Walch of the AP/MTT, Thad Welch of the COMSOC, Garth MacKenzie of the Computer Society, Dave Burnell of the EDS/SSC, Bob Berkovits of EMC, Dave Sherman of EMB, Mark Welsko of IAS, Eric Henlon of PES, Walt Willing of Reliability and Dominic Georgantas for GOLD. Thanks also to Jerry Gibbon our Region Area Chair, Howard Needham Chair of Washington, Amarjeet Basra Chair of Northern VA and Moshe Kam the Region II Director. I would also like to thank Ron Osborn for putting together a great series of meeting forCOMSOC, my technical society.

During my tenure, we have added a GOLD Affinity group, thanks to Wole Akpose, a WIE Affiny group thanks to Tina Kohler, and the beginnings of a Consultant's Network thanks to the efforts of Dave Pfaltzgraff.

I am sure that I have forgotten to acknowledge some folks who have contributed to the success of our section and I am sorry if I have missed your name. Thank you too.

Unfortunately we have lost the AES chapter due to lack of interest and are now in danger of losing the Computer Chapter due to the resignation of our chapter chair and having not one to fill his shoes. If you are interested in working on maintaining the computer chapter, please contact Brian Sequeira, our new section chair.

Again my heart felt thanks for this opportunity to serve you.

Respectfully,

Jeff Friedhoffer

2. IEEE-USA CARE Network

Here is a message from Russell T. Harrison to the IEEE Section Leaders.

Now that the election is out of the way, planning can begin in earnest for next year. Traditionally, the year after a Presidential election is Congress' most productive. 2005 looks to follow this pattern. Already President Bush has indicated a desire to enact sweeping reforms to Social Security, immigration law and the tax code. While he will probably not succeed in all of these areas, it is clear that Congress will be busy.

And when Congress is busy, IEEE-USA is busy. Dozens of proposals will be debated next year that could affect IEEE members. Foremost among these is immigration reform, which may involve significant changes to the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. IEEE-USA needs to be able to respond quickly to all of these proposals. While your lobbyists in Washington stand ready to argue on your behalf, we will need help from individual members to ensure that we are heard.

The reality is that members of Congress prefer to hear from their constituents, rather than lobbyists. So no matter how good the IEEE-USA staff is, there is no substitute for voters contacting their legislators' offices directly.

But there is a problem. IEEE has a very strict No-SPAM policy, which means that IEEE-USA cannot contact American IEEE members directly about legislative events. Should Congress consider a bill that would cost half of our members their jobs, we could not email the members to tell them about it.

Unless, that is, we have their permission. Three years ago IEEE-USA created the CARE program. CARE is a mailing list. By joining, CARE members give IEEE-USA permission to contact them about legislation that will affect American engineers. These contacts, in the form of Legislative Action Alerts, are infrequent, usually less than once per month, but they represent the best and fastest way for IEEE-USA to communicate with our members on legislative issues. The Action Alerts contain information on pending legislation, why it should concern engineers, where to find more detailed information on the issue, and what IEEE members can do about it.

As we prepare for next years' busy legislative session, please ask your members to sign up for the CARE program. Attached is a formal sign-up form. Please distribute it to your section members, and ask them to consider joining. Alternatively, interested members can just send me an e-mail asking to join. The only qualification for CARE membership is an interest in public policy.

IEEE has 225,000 American members. In 2004 only about 1,500 were involved with our legislative efforts in Washington, yet we scored several significant legislative victories. Imagine what we could do if we had all 225,000 involved.

Thank you for your help

Russell T. Harrison

Legislative Representative - Grassroots Affairs

IEEE-USA

(202) 530-8326

r.t.harrison@ieee.org

Editor’s Note:

For those interested, please send Mr. Harrison an email. The form mentioned above is not attached to this email.

3. IEEE Organizing Global Pre-College Technology Education Program

Continuing in its tradition of innovation, IEEE is taking the lead in developing a new non-discriminatory global pre-college technology education program. The program titled, emeritbadges.org, will be directed globally towards pre-college boys and girls.

Emeritbadges.org has developed hands-on electricity and electronics instructional material based on the Boy Scouts merit badge requirements. Instructional material for computer education is being developed. Any student, boy or girl can use the program to enhance technical literacy and learn more about viable engineering and other technical career options.

Emeritbadges.org Project Director Ralph W. Russell, II from the IEEE Richmond, VA Section said that this non-discriminatory program would be promoted globally through IEEE and youth programs such as World Organization of the Scout Movement and The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. The next use of the new global pre-college electronics education material and hands-on kit will be at the 2005 National Scout Jamboree in Caroline County, VA, USA. Over 35,000 scouts will attend the Jamboree from the USA and several other countries.

Project leaders have started discussions with national and regional Girl Scout leaders to develop a method of incorporating the emeritbadges.org program into the Girl Scout program. The next step will be to start discussions with the global World Organization of the Scout Movement and The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

The 2005 Jamboree will be held at Fort A. P. Hill in Caroline, Virginia. The Jamboree will start on Monday, 25 July 2005 and end on Wednesday, 3 August 2005. Hundreds of volunteers that can serve as Assistant Instructors at the Jamboree Electronics Merit Badge booth for at least two days are needed. Additional project and volunteer information can be found at http://www.emeritbadges.org.