Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E., recalls arriving at the decision to become a registered professional engineer. Today, he sits on a committee that helps develop and vet the questions used for the examination. It was the right decision for him. Is licensure right for you and your career?

All too often, people revisit their networking contacts when they need an introduction to power a job search campaign. Contrary to popular practice, the best time for leveraging connections is not when you are about to enter the job market, but rather on a continuous basis — always keeping in touch, sharing information, initiating ideas, reaching out and being generous to an increasingly larger circle of colleagues and associates.

After years of saving and planning for retirement, you may be relieved and excited to realize that you can finally afford to stop working. The period of transitioning from the workforce to retirement will itself present a whole series of financial issues to address. Careful planning in the months leading up to retirement can ensure a smooth transition from employee to retiree. TE offers some guidelines for working with your investment professional to make the transition run as smoothly as possible.

Most of us have, at one time or another, been mentored and taught on-the-job. Some of us have also been “mentored” back in high school, middle school, or even grade school — an experience akin to that “aha” moment when you realized that this is what you enjoy and want to do when you grow up. Help share that “aha” moment with children so that they, too, can become engineers or scientists.

Now that the national unemployment rate is down to 4.7 percent, and in some areas of the country, 3 percent, the pendulum is swinging from concerns over where currently displaced engineers and computer scientists can find work to how we will meet the future demands for talent. A continuing concern of IEEE-USA's Career and workforce Policy Committee is that predicting future demand is a precarious task. A look at the Department of Labor's latest forecasts for workforce demand through 2014.

Mary Lou Jepsen's humanitarian mission to develop and mass produce a $100 laptop to be used by the world's children is nearing fruition. The ambitious project's CTO describes how a 10-minute interview with MIT Media Labs' Nicholas Negroponte for a faculty position turned into a three-hour discussion about the need for a low-cost computer and the sort of organization that could make it happen. Jepsen shares a progress report on the organization and the computer that promises to transform education around the globe.

A topic of interest to many within the IEEE is how best to build relationships with the organizations that employ our members. Before the IEEE-USA Career and workforce Policy Committee (CWPC) met in Portland, Ore., in March, committee members spent a Friday in a series of meetings with industry and academia reps. The meetings were coordinated through the Oregon Section and members of the Section attended the meetings.