If you are interested in being a mentor for a night for college students, the Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC) needs your help! The purpose of the mentor night is to bring as many practicing engineers together with as many students as possible. We are trying to inspire the students, most of whom are sophomores or juniors, toward a career in engineering. The mentoring allows engineers to explain their experiences in the profession and answer questions posed by students. Here’s the agenda for this year’s event:

6:00 pm Welcome & Introductions
6:05 pm Panel Discussion (selected mentors will answer questions after a brief presentation on a special topic about their engineering careers)
6:40 pm Break – Food
7:00 pm Break-Out Sessions (three 20 minute sessions involving all mentors)
8:10 pm Conclusion & Wrap-Up
The panel discussion will be comprised of four professionals from various organizations, disciplines, years of experience, and diversity.

Students will be able to ask general questions about engineering to any of the panelists. Mentors are welcome to come early to hear the panel. Break-out sessions allow for one-on-one mentoring of students. Students rotate between mentors and tables to get a broad overview of answers to their questions.

Please sign up online by October 19th.
Maps and further instruction will be sent out prior to the event.

ITT Technical Institute, a system of schools around the US, has several IEEE Student Branches, including one at their Portland campus and their Spokane campus here in the Northwest.  They successfully formed a group and filed the petition to form a student branch in Everett.  They join the other active Student Branches.  We need a volunteer to serve as Industry Advisor.  For more about this campus, see this page.

Have you wanted to make a difference in your professional society? Here is an opportunity to contribute, to grow as a professional and network in the industry.

Every year, we elect new Section officers: chair, vice chair, secretary and treasurer. In fact, due in part to networking in IEEE, we are losing some of them. So we will have more openings that usual for 2012. The nominating committee will be looking for candidates from existing Section and Chapter volunteers. Members are also encouraged to nominate others or themselves.

These jobs take 1-2 hours per week on average. The duties are described at the following links:

• chair
• vice chair
• secretary
• treasurer

Those of us who have served in this offices are happy to help train our successors. There are executive committee meetings on the 2nd Tuesday of the month, September through June.
Please contact the nominating committee members by the end of July:

• Joe Decuir
• Dave Butcher
• Erik Godo

We may contact you for interviews this summer. We plan to publish a slate of Nominees by September 6. We invite candidates to attend executive committee meetings on September 13. There are also provisions for petition nominations; see section 9.12 of the MGA Operations Manual.

The election will be conducted in October, for terms running for calendar 2012. Final votes will be due October 16, to be processed and announced at the Fall Banquet on October 18.