| Magazines
and newspapers these days are full of articles lauding the advantages
of growing older - movie theater discounts, reverse mortgages, a
ready excuse for forgetting names - an endless stream of goodies.
One of the topics that never seems to be mentioned, however, is
that the IEEE is a very special part of the universe. In our little
corner, you can become a Senior Member after only ten years of "professional
practice" with five of those years being of "significant
performance" (and you get to count some of the years of your
education toward those ten). You do not have to, as I foolishly
did, wait until your hair is gray. In order to remedy the lack of
information on IEEE Senior Membership in the popular press, I wanted
to share with you my experiences in acquiring the coveted “Senior”
on my membership card, show how easy the process is, and urge all
of you who are no longer complete whippersnappers to go for it.
Note that you do not get movie discounts (at least not at any of
my local theaters) but you can, at any time, pull out your IEEE
card and use the “Senior Moment” excuse with full official
documentation.
The requirements for Senior grade and the mechanics of applying
are already nicely covered in an IEEE web page that you can get
to from a link on the NPSS membership page (http:// ewh.ieee.org/soc/nps/joinnpss.htm)
and so there is no need to cover them here except to summarize that
you need to fill out a short on-line form, attach a recent CV, and
then getting three colleagues to fill out an even shorter reference
form. The only tricky part of this process is that the recommenders
not only have to be IEEE members (isn't everyone?) but they have
to be of Senior or Fellow grade. Thus your challenge is to find
someone of Senior or Fellow grade who knows you and your work well
enough to act as a reference for you to the Senior Member review
panel.
Fellows are listed by name, region, and society on the main IEEE
web site (http://
www.ieee.org/web/membership/fellows/index.html) so you can browse
through the lists to find some people you know and who know you.
Senior members, however, while more numerous, are a bit more difficult
to identify since there is no openly available on-line IEEE directory.
Simply asking one’s co-workers and colleagues certainly works
- they should be flattered that you would assume that they are merited
such recognition and maybe volunteer to join the search if they
themselves are not yet elevated. A somewhat old membership directory
is available to AdCom. Thus, any member of AdCom can search for
you to try to find Senior members in your company or institute.
It is possible that a list of Senior Members’ names may be
posted on the NPSS site. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I used
my access to this list to discover that about half my eligible friends
and colleagues were not Senior Members and so they can expect to
be contacted individually.)
Once you have completed your application and asked your three references
to submit their recommendations (note that you will need their IEEE
member numbers and they will need yours as part of this process)
you will be sent an e-mail acknowledging the application and pointing
you to a web-based list of applications. This is a useful site to
check after a while as it will list you and the status of your references
(by initials). You will be able to discover the difference between
your friend who says “of course” and fills out the form
in the next hour and your other friend who says “certainly”
and then forgets all about it - I discovered that a reminder in
three or four weeks produced a reasonable amount of guilt and that
a second reminder was all it took to get my application in shape
to be reviewed. The application web site also lists when the next
meeting of the grade elevation committee is scheduled to take place
and hints that you will get e-mail confirmation soon after that
meeting.
There will be a couple of real physical mailings from IEEE within
a few weeks - a congratulatory letter with a $25 discount certificate
toward joining another society, another benefit, and then a brand
new membership card with “Senior” emblazoned on it.
In addition, some weeks later, a rather nice engraved plaque arrives.
The whole process, for me, took about five months.
In summary, the requirements for Senior Member grade are straightforward,
the effort involved in applying for senior grade is not great, the
cost is zero (0), and the benefits are significant. In addition
to your own personal sense of accomplishment, the Society (NPSS)
gets some recognition from the Institute.
I urge all of you who are past their first decade of professional
service to explore upgrading to Senior Member status and I would
be glad to try to help anyone who may encounter any problems along
the way.
Rick Van Berg can be reached at rick@hep.upenn.edu.
He is eager to help you elevate your membership status.
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