University of Nis ED/SSC Joint Chapter and Student Branch Chapter Report

A promotional campaign specifically aimed at attracting younger students to join IEEE was conducted in the first half of September 2003. At the end of the campaign a luncheon was organized for the five best students from each year of studies, followed by a presentation of chapter activities by Tatjana Pesic. At the chapter meeting, held in conjunction with the ED/SSC Chapter, Dr. Ninoslav Stojadinovic gave the lecture titled "IEEE: Why students should join."
In December 2003 our chapter meeting was held at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Nis. Professor H. Schwanbeck (Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany) presented the lecture "Installation, administration, and parallel programming of/in Linux clusters," while Professor V. Zerbe (Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany) gave the presentation "Parallel algorithms-parallel matrix multiplication." This was an all-day meeting with a lunch break. Besides chapter members, postgraduate students from the field of microelectronics attended the meeting
Also in December our student chapter organized a visit to the EI Holding Corporation, the largest manufacturer of electronic products in Serbia and Montenegro. Our delegation of 44 people was received by Dr. Vojislav Mitic, Head of Corporation, and Dr. Zoran Prijic, Vice-Head of Corporation. The students toured corporate factories, a computer center, and a factory restaurant. The visit enabled students to get a feel for the atmosphere in a corporation and to talk to electrical engineers working in industry.
At the annual chapter meeting in January Dr. Stojadinovic presented the report for 2003 and plan for 2004, which were supported and adopted. For the student branch chapter meeting, Tatjana Pesic did the same. We organized a promotion ceremony for new members, followed by a cocktail party. We have found that social events, such as cocktail parties and evening parties in the local student pub, are interesting for students and are a good way to attract new members. Our membership promotion campaign also uses former or current student members who are working as professors and teaching assistants to discuss the value of membership during the classes they teach.
In February we organized a visit to the museum of the great inventor Nikola Tesla in Belgrade. The chapter subsidizes some students' costs.
As a final step in the student promotion campaign, Dr. Stojadinovic gave a presentation on the IEEE's mission, goals, and benefits in a lecture hall at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Nis. Also, the April chapter meeting was held at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Nis, at which we played the videotape "Getting ready: Careers for electrical engineering and computer scientists," borrowed from the EDS Video Tape Lending Library. The videotape presentation was aimed at increasing the interest of young scholars in pursuing careers in engineering disciplines, particularly, in electrical engineering.
During May 2004, the University of Nis ED/SSC Student Branch Chapter helped organized portions of the MIEL 2004 conference (16-19 May 2004, Nis), allowing students to get a feel for feel the atmosphere of an international scientific meeting. They also were invited to join the sightseeing tour organized for conference participants and will be remembered for their charm and enthusiasm. See more about the MIEL conference in the accompanying article.
During the 48th Conference on Electronics, Telecommunications, Computer Sciences, Automatics, and Nuclear Science (ETRAN 2004) held in Cacak, 6-10 June, chapter members contributed some of the 36 papers in the session on Microelectronics and Optoelectronics.