IEEEUSA

IEEE-USA Launches New Career Manager for Members

ne of the principal reasons IEEE-USA was founded in 1973 was to provide career resources for US IEEE members, to help them enjoy long and fruitful careers. In its quest to continue providing these resources, IEEE-USA has launched a redesigned careers page. The IEEE-USA Career Manager (http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers) is organized into eight categories, designed to help members manage and advance in their career. The titles of these categories are: Career Management Interactive Workshop Salary Service Consulting and Entrepreneurship Professional Development Webinars Employment Assistance and Job Search IEEE Online Distance Learning E-Book Library IEEE.tv

The interactive online workshop, Making a Difference, is intended to help members learn how to increase their job satisfaction, become and remain a top performer, maximize employability, and receive the support needed to achieve their career goals. The IEEE-USA Salary Service offers those who take the organizations annual Salary and Fringe Benefits Survey five complimentary uses of the IEEE-USA Salary Calculator. This helps members determine their market value, assess job offers, and negotiate salaries. Employment assistance includes the IEEE-USA Employment Navigator, which captures hard-to-find job postings; the IEEE Job Site; and IEEE-USA Employment Networks, where small groups of people come together in person or electronically to help one another in their job search. IEEE-USA also offers a wide array of resources for consultants and entrepreneurs. The IEEE-USA Consultants Directory is an online meeting place where employers and consultants can be paired on specific projects. Among other items, entrepreneurial services include resources the Small Business Administration provides to high-tech business owners, and TechMatch, where business proposals are reviewed by experts and potential investors can be reached. More on IEEE-USAs Career Manager are available at http://www.todaysengineer.org/2012/Jul/career-manager.asp.

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Professional Exam for Software Engineering to be Offered in April 2013

CEES, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, will begin offering a Principles and Practice of Engineering exam a PE exam in software engineering in April 2013. Registration is scheduled to open mid-December 2012. IEEE-USA is an exam cosponsor, and is working with the IEEE Computer Society to release sample study questions (see http://ncees.org/exams). IEEE Fellow Dr. Phillip Laplante, a professor of software engineering at Penn State Universitys Malvern, PA, campus and a member of the IEEE-USA Licensure and Registration Committee, is Chair of the Software Engineering Licensure Examination Development Committee. He is playing a key role in the exams development. The exam is the result of a comprehensive survey study of several hundred software engineering professionals and the hard work of a dedicated committee of practicing software engineers with extensive experience in a wide range of mission-critical systems, Laplante said. Sample exam questions will be available to prospective examinees in October.

Many state licensing boards have long contended that because software engineers play a significant and expanding role in the design and operation of safety-critical systems, they should be regulated in the same manner as other engineering disciplines. Projects affecting public health, welfare, and safety such as electric grids, traffic-control systems, and watertreatment plants require licensed engineers to verify that design work is done properly. The National Society of Professional Engineers and the Texas Board of Professional Engineers are also assisting in the exams development. It will be used by engineering licensing boards across the United States, and will be administered yearly. More on the licensing of software engineers is available in an FAQ article from Laplante at http://theinstitute.ieee.org/ ieee-roundup/opinions/ieee-roundup/answers-to-faqs-aboutsoftware-licensing.

IEEE-USAs Free E-Book for Members in August

s a special benefit to IEEE members in August, IEEEUSA will provide the e-book Technical Presentations, Book 1: Strategy, Preparation and Planning. The intent of this book is help readers learn how to better present technical information to a broad spectrum of individuals, including coworkers, executives, and potential clients, in a variety of formats, such as conference papers, training materials, and funding proposals. Even if an engineer does not present papers or make other formal presentations, he or she must daily present ideas and opinions in a clear and concise manner. Without a strategy and appropriate preparation, a presentation will be unfocused, not apply, or fail completely. Technical Presentations, Book 1 is the first of a four-part series. It outlines a framework to help users prepare for their next presentation. It is available to members as a free download

in August. To purchase IEEE member-only products and to receive the member discount on eligible products, members must log in with their IEEE Web account.

Call for Authors

IEEE-USA E-Books seeks authors to write an e-book or a series of e-books on career guidance and development topics. Anyone having an idea for an e-book that will benefit members on a particular topic should e-mail their e-book proposal to IEEE-USA Publishing Manager Georgia C. Stelluto at g.stelluto@ieee.org. [The above items were taken from IEEE-USA press releases.]

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IEEE-USA Engineering Mass Media Fellow Reports on Science and Technology at The Oregonian

an C. Campbell, a 2012 PhD student in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, is IEEE-USAs 2012 Engineering Mass Media Fellow. Campbell is reporting this summer on science and technology at The Oregonian newspaper in Portland, Oregon. He is the second IEEE-USA Engineering Mass Media Fellow to intern for a 10-week period at The Oregonian, following Brandon Blakely in 2011. In his application for the program, Campbell stated, As a biomedical engineer, I feel it is my duty not only to conduct high-quality research, but also to act as an ambassador of sci-tech to the general public. I hope to improve the general impression of science and engineering by making the disciplines more relatable to the average person. I want to do more than just conduct elegant research in my specialty; I want to help the public understand my field and how it affects the public. The IEEE-USA Engineering Mass Media Fellow has had impressive experience communicating with the public, especially elementary and high-school students, on science, engineering, and technology. For example, he volunteered in a third-grade classroom in a public school in Atlanta, helping youngsters understand that science class can be mean more than worksheets. Third graders joined Ian in dissecting owl pellets, building bird feeders, and making cleaning products out of nontoxic chemicals, ...while learning about the food web, animal habitats, and the water cycle. In addition, as an academic assistant at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, he helped boost non-science majors self-esteem by relating science and math curricula to the undergraduates everyday lives. In a letter of recommendation, a former Chair of the St. Olaf Physics Department praised Campbell as the first author of a manuscript on Antarctic ice streams presented at a fall

2006 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, as well as for an article on the same subject published in the Journal of Glaciology in 2008. Further, with the former physics department Chair, Campbell was co-presenter at the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Forum on Climate Change. As one of Campbells co-advisers at the Emory University School of Medicine wrote, He is simply the smartest graduate student I have ever worked with, and one of the best writers. A second co-adviser cited Campbells undergraduate work at St. Olaf as enhancing his writing ability. He graduated magna cum laude in 2007, having double majored in physics and math, with a curriculum heavy in writing, philosophy, Latin, and the classics. Helping to select the organizations 2012 Fellow again this year were former IEEE-USA Communications Committee Chair Abby Robinson, herself an IEEE-USA Mass Media Fellow in 2005; and former Communications Committee Chair and long-time Media Fellows program supporter, Allan C. Schell. Since 2000, 15 US IEEE undergraduate and graduate students have served as IEEE-USA Engineering Mass Media Fellows, helping journalists in print and broadcast fields communicate authoritatively to the public on science, engineering and technology. IEEE-USA is the only engineering organization in the Mass Media Fellows program, which is administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2011, 11 AAAS Mass Media Fellows produced nearly 200 original science and technology stories. As a result of IEEE-USAs participation in the program, volunteers and staff have established contact with key journalists to promote IEEE-USA activities. More information on IEEE-USAs participation in the Mass Media Fellows program is available at http://www. ieeeusa.org/communications/massmedia.asp.

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