Chair's Corner
Willie Fitzpatrick, Section Chair

Hello Everyone!! I would like to take a moment to thank all of the members for volunteering to serve in various capacities within the Section. This will be another exciting year and I look forward to working with each of you again. The next four months will be fast paced and demand more of our time than usual. We co-hosted the 2008 Alabama Region Future City Competition (ARFCC) in Huntsville on January 19, 2008 at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). ARFCC Chair Sonya Hutchinson and her team of judges witnessed another great showing in this year’s competition, as did all the students, parents, teachers, and engineer mentors who attended.. You can see photos of the event at the ARFCC link in the attached article, including slide shows and multimedia movies. We will also be shifting to high gear in the planning for hosting SoutheastCon 2008 in April. We will need lots of volunteers to support this effort and encourage each of you to register for the conference early. The conference will feature excellent tutorials, technical papers, student competitions (e.g., hardware and software), and networking with various IEEE Region 3 members, just to name a few of the exciting opportunities at the conference. You can contact Eric Grigorian for additional information and the myriad opportunities in which you can serve. Please access the SoutheastCon 2008 link for further information and to register for the conference. Also note that we will be offering Continuing Education Units for each of the tutorials.

Last year, I challenged each of you to do even more to make this the best Section in the Region and ensuring the vitality of the Section and each Chapter by hosting more technical meetings; taking advantage of the Distinguished Lecture program to help increase attendance at our technical meetings; encouraging more members to apply for elevation from Member to Senior Member. We did well in the two of the three challenges; however we missed the mark in the number of applications for Members requesting elevation. Hence I’m again challenging eligible members to apply for elevation to Senior Membership. We had 11 members elevated in 2006 and I believe there will easy for us to successfully elevate 25 persons during 2008. You can contact the Membership Committee or Woody Williams for additional details.

We have several articles in this issue on culturing the next generation of engineers and scientists to help maintain our technological proficiency and leadership. See the articles written by university educators from University of Alabama Huntsville, Alabama A&M University, and University of Central Florida. Our technological future lies in the hands of our youth, help us find opportunities to encourage technical career pursuits. You will really enjoy the article on the Alabama Regional Future City Competition (ARFCC), written by ARFCC Chair Sonya Hutchinson. We accompanied that article with a range of event photos viewable in single photo or slide show mode, and the competition just gets better every year.

The month of February is always busy for us since it the month we celebrate Engineers Week. This year as always we recognized the Section’s Outstanding Engineer and Outstanding Educator on February 22 at the UAH Bevill Center, see the Engineer's Week Banquet and Section Awards article for details and photos. This is also the time we need to identify volunteer judges for the Alabama State and North Alabama Regional Science and Engineering Fairs.  Section representatives will participate in judging the Alabama Council for Technology in Education (ACTE) programming contests and other ACTE events at the VBC during March 2008.  Please contact Frank Parris if you are interested in volunteering or being a judge for these events.

Willie J. Fitzpatrick, PhD
Chair, IEEE Huntsville Section