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The IEEE Leads EWeek 2004

By Chris McManes

The IEEE is serving as lead society for National Engineers Week (EWeek) this year, 22-28 February, and is helping to pave the way for expanding the celebration around the world.

"We live in an increasingly global world, so it just makes sense to expand EWeek concepts worldwide," said IEEE member and EWeek 2004 Chair Joseph V. Lillie. "We think the EWeek model we have established can serve as a blueprint for engineers around the world."

IEEE President Arthur W. Winston will help kick off the international outreach by delivering a speech to the Hong Kong Section, which will hold its first EWeek event in 2004. The New Faces of Engineering recognition program will this year include non-U.S. engineers, and an ad featuring those distinguished professionals will run in the International Herald Tribune. The ad is running courtesy of a grant from the IEEE Foundation. A similar piece will appear in The Economist magazine.

IEEE-USA is producing a New Faces of Engineering calendar with one of the 12 U.S. honorees featured each month. The group will also be recognized in a USA Today ad. All of the New Faces ads will run during EWeek.

National Engineers Week, founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers in 1951, celebrates the engineering profession and the engineers whose creative work improves living standards. Its programs and activities are designed to instill pride among all engineers, increase public awareness of the key role engineers play and spark an interest in the profession among youngsters. IEEE-USA is coordinating the IEEE’s lead effort.

The IEEE’s corporate partner is the Fluor Corp. of Aliso, Viejo, Calif., one of the world’s largest publicly owned engineering, procurement, construction and maintenance services organizations. Fluor is introducing "Connecting the World to Engineering" in 2004, a series of teleconferences designed to connect a business leader with undergraduate engineering students to engage in a live presentation and discussion of a selected engineering topic. The project will also include online interactive forums between engineering students, engineer moderators and subject matter experts.

Fluor CEO Alan L. Boeckmann will lead the first teleconference. Joe Lillie, who’s also the IEEE’s Regional Activities Board treasurer, will moderate. The event is slated to reach college students in Africa, Canada, Europe, South America and the United States. Doug Gorham, IEEE’s precollege education manager, has arranged the participation of South Africa’s University of Pretoria.

Michael N. Geselowitz, director of the IEEE History Center, contributed a brief history of electricity and link to www.discoverengineering.org to an EWeek bookmark; and a hands-on activity on the back of the EWeek poster. He recommends a visit to the IEEE Virtual Museum (www.ieee-virtual-museum.org) for exhibits on technologies that use electricity and magnetism.

The IEEE Women in Engineering affinity group is promoting Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/real_benefit.shtml) on 26 February. The goal is to mobilize a target of 11,000 women engineers, who along with their male colleagues, will reach out to an estimated one million girls that day and throughout the year. IEEE-USA volunteer Joey Duvall is chairing this year’s event. She hopes it interests more girls in the profession, and supports a national effort to increase the ranks of engineers in the United States.

"The heart and soul of Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day are the young women we inspire," said Duvall, an RF systems engineer at Lockheed Martin in Orlando, Fla. "I've had a great deal of support from key role models throughout my journey, and I never doubted I could become an engineer. That's the message I hope to give to my younger, future colleagues."

Although not scheduled during EWeek, the IEEE will participate in a United Nations briefing, "Girls and Technology: New Educational Opportunities," on 25 March in New York (www.un.org/dpi/ngosection/janmar04.pdf). Sylvia Wilson-Thomas, former chair of IEEE-USA’s Career & Workforce Policy Committee, will speak at the event.

Because of the IEEE’s support, the Future City Competition, which IEEE-USA introduced to EWeek in 1993, is able to bring three additional teams to its national finals in Washington. Future City is up to 34 U.S. regions and reaches more than 30,000 middle-school students. Pilot programs have been started in Egypt, India, Japan and Sweden. For more information, visit www.futurecity.org.

Also in the nation’s capital, the IEEE’s Lillie will promote EWeek through a nationwide radio media tour, and will help judge the final portion of the Future City national competition. IEEE-USA will present its Best Communications System award at the competition for the fourth consecutive year, and IEEE members Dominique Green and Lowell Smith will work as judges.

The IEEE Life Member Committee is funding a longitudinal study to see where Future City alumni have landed professionally, and to conduct a demographic analysis of current participants. The study is designed to serve as a fund-raising tool so potential sponsors can see evidence of Future City’s success.

IEEE-USA and IEEE Spectrum magazine commissioned a survey of members and student members to find out what they like about engineering. Spectrum will feature the findings in its February issue.

For more information on how you can get involved in EWeek, visit www.eweek.org or www.ieeeusa.org/eweek. An EWeek engineer volunteer kit is available at http://www.eweek.org/site/Engineers/kit.shtml.

 

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Chris McManes is IEEE-USA's Sr. Marketing Communications / Public Relations Coordinator.