| Fostering
technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.
This is your IEEE’s mission statement. I have to admit I love
seeing it - and being reminded that what we do for a living really
does affect our world.
For the past few years, IEEE has been working on strategic planning
and establishing corporate goals. These efforts are essentially
a recognition that the engineering profession is fluid. The ways
that professional societies serve their members is fundamentally
different than when the IEEE was formed by the merger of the Institute
of Radio Engineers and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
in 1963. For instance, in the past, IEEE members were largely residents
of North America. Now, IEEE members live in 160 countries around
the world and non-North Americans constitute the fastest growing
segment of membership.
At the first TAB meeting of this year, the Envisioned Future of
the IEEE was presented. An envisioned future is a concrete, but
yet unrealized, vision for the future of an organization. The IEEE’s
Big Audacious Goal is to “be essential to the global technical
community and to technical professionals everywhere and be universally
recognized for the contributions of technology and of technical
professionals in improving global conditions.” There is action
already behind these Big Audacious Goals- IEEE is partnering with
the United Nations to bring technology to solve simple problems
with, and regarding, technology. This is called the Humanitarian
Technology Challenge. A central theme is to avoid pet solutions
looking for a problem and instead to partner with organizations
and citizens within developing countries to provide appropriate
solutions. The NPSS was the first society to nominate a representative,
Ray Larsen of SLAC.
A critical part of strategic planning is to name one’s core
values - the essential and enduring principles that guide us. In
addition to the core values that we, as society members expect,
such as high quality and unbiased peer review processes, professionalism
and intellectual activity, the IEEE Core Values include service
to community, collaboration and community building, and a global
focus. Common within many of these core value statements is the
focus on ethics - which has long been an integral part of the IEEE.
A key item running throughout the Envisioned Future is the IEEE
commitment to educating the next generation of engineers. A five-year
goal is to improve the professional competencies of students and
professionals through education. The IEEE has a long- standing Educational
Activities Board which focuses on this topic as well as providing
an accreditation process. Our universities are undergoing large
changes in curricula and I expect these goals to yield recognizable
results in the next few years.
The objective of your Big Audacious Goal, and vocalizing your Core
Values, is to set goals. A key goal is to ensure that industry professionals
and their employers will value IEEE as a major resource to achieve
their success. Moreover, the public will increasingly value the
role of technical professionals in enhancing the quality of life
and the environment. IEEE will operate as a model global association
with aligned purpose, energy and infrastructure that facilitates
the development and execution of coordinated strategy.
I am proud to be part of an IEEE that has such a strong sense of
purpose. I can assure you that the numerous volunteers representing
us all at the various levels of IEEE work hard at providing the
infrastructure needed to achieve these goals. Of course, an organization
is only as strong as its base and our IEEE base is mortared with
highly principled engineers and scientists.
Jane Lehr, IEEE NPSS President, can be reached at Sandia National
Laboratories, MS1152, PO Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM 87185-1193; Phone
+1 505 844 8554; E-mail: jmlehr@sandia.gov.
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