MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE

To recruit new members, I participated in 2005 at the IEEE Membership desk during the following NPSS conferences:

• Particle Accelerator Conference (PAC 05) held in Knoxville, TN;
  
• 32nd International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS 05) held in Monterey CA
  
• 15th International Pulsed Power Conference (PPC05) held in Monterey, CA;
  
• Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SFE 05) held in Knoxville, TN;
  
• 42nd Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC 05) held in Seattle, WA;
  
• Nuclear Science Symposium/Medical Imaging Conference (NSS/MIC 05) held in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.

In addition, Drs. Uwe Bratzler and Christoph Ilgner from CERN created an elegant NPSS membership booth for use in recruiting at those of our conferences held in Europe. Their booth mimics but also improves upon the design of the booth created by Dr. Peter Clout for use in North American conferences. The first use of their booth occurred when Uwe and Christoph introduced RADECS attendees to IEEE and to NPSS at the following conference:

• Radiation and its Effects on Components and Systems (RADECS 05) held in Cap d’Agde, France.

Each of these conferences was well attended and was a high-quality scientific meeting. Attendees each received a crafted NPSS brochure along with flyers describing our society so that, in addition to the scientific program, the non-IEEE members became well aware of the benefits and values of membership in NPSS. Except for RADECS¹, only about half of conference attendees typically are IEEE members. Beyond that, only about one-fourth of conference attendees are NPSS members. In spite of a strong effort to attract the non members², fewer people were recruited in 2005 at the above conferences than has been my experience in similar conferences held in earlier years over more than a decade period. Why did this happen?

One observation is that fewer IEEE members as a whole are choosing to belong to IEEE societies as compared to choices in past years. It is possible that this is a result of the success of the Xplore program for Web-based IEEE periodicals. A steady decline in society participation by IEEE members has occurred over the past four years. Over 44% of IEEE members now do not belong to any of the IEEE societies. Following a trend that other IEEE societies are experiencing, membership in the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society has also fallen. This trend for our society may be illustrated in the plot above where one can see the results of reduced recruiting results in the November-December 2005 period.
Other observations from the above plot show that the extent of the drop-offs occurring in February (at the time when IEEE places those people who do not renew into ‘lapsed member’ status) has gradually reduced from the 512 lapsed members in February 2003 to 394 lapsed members in 2005. This decrease in our loss during the lapse period may show that fewer of the ‘steady-state’ members are leaving our ranks. Our average membership per year for the three year period is 2878 in 2003, 2773 in 2004 and now 2688 in 2005. We have lost 371 members since December 2002 and few of those are likely to return. We see in the plot that the typical ‘up-tick’ in membership at the end of the year did not occur in 2005 because too few people were recruited at the NSS/MIC conference. Our 4.1% loss at the end of 2005 compared to the previous December, places our society at the highest loss among those societies classed in IEEE Division IV. Those are Antennas and Propagation, Broadcast Technology, Consumer Electronics, Electromagnetic Compatibility, Magnetics, Microwave Theory and Techniques and, finally, NPSS.
IEEE always has strongly encouraged the expansion of society memberships. But recently, some society membership chairs have begun to question that philosophy. It has also been debated off and on over the years within the NPSS AdCom as well. The society chairs have pointed out on the web that the fees charged for society members provide less income than the costs involved supporting the members. Why then should attempts be made to recruit new members if the result is to increase the losses? The discussions, still on-going, recognize that members are essential for a society to be viable but that there may be an optimal number for a given society to flourish. Too many members may result in excessively high costs (primarily related to shipping journals to transnational members) and too few places heavy burdens on the volunteers. As members age and retire, they need to be replaced. The discussions note that not only economic factors need consideration but also social ones. People function best when they can interact with others whom they know. Some societies are developing decision analysis models to help to plan how much effort should be made to expand membership once the optimal number of members is known. As time goes by and the results of these studies are exchanged, I may be able to interpret their results for inclusion in some future Newsletter.
At the end of this past year, I ended my active participation in recruitment of NPSS members at our conferences. Over more than a decade, I have recruited more than a thousand new members for IEEE and for our society. At each conference, I see many whom I recruited even years ago and it is always pleasurable for me to say ‘Hello’ to them. Further, I am grateful to members of our AdCom who have helped me so much since 1990 and to the many conference organizing committee members who have made it pleasant for me to be at their conferences. I will try to be helpful to any who follow me in carrying out this work. Auf wiedersehen!
Vernon G. Price, the recently retired Membership, Chapters and Distinguished Lecturers chair, can be reached at 22151 Berkeley Ct., Los Altos, CA 94024-7452 USA; Phone: +1 408 737 0778; Fax: +1 408 737 1922; E-mail: v.price@ieee.org.

¹ Most attendees at RADECS come from Region 8 and a smaller fraction of them are IEEE members.

² An exception is the NSREC conference where a higher fraction has NPSS membership has occurred as a consequence of considerable effort by the NSREC committee to support NPSS growth.