Oregon Section ExCom

Agenda:
- New business
- Financial reporting is due for all chapters - reminder
- Any officer problems within the Chapters?
- How did the vTools Voting go for everyone?
- Discuss sending rep to IEEE-USA's annual Congressional Visits Day (CVD) April 8-9, 2025 in Washington, DC.
- Discuss Business for upcoming R6 meeting
- Science Fair
- Milestones
- Officer and Society Chapter Reports
- PSU Student Branch Report

Highlights:
- New folks are transitioning into roles at Section and Chapter level
- Congrats to Ed Epp for the Region 6 Outstanding IEEE Member Award for Outstanding Educator, Mentor or Facilitator in the area of STEM award
- Congrats to Richard Dorrance for the 2024 IEEE SSCS Chapter with Best Distinguished Lecturer Program Award
- PSU Student Branch officers attended
- Next meeting 11 February and will be held virtually
- May is the next in-person ExCom planned. Intention is to have the meeting at PSU so that students may attend.

Action Items Captured:
- Please let David know as he can help with issues that Chapters may be facing.
- Identify whether someone wants to participate in the Congressional Visit day in April.
- Those in new roles, please work with the former office holder on any transition activities needed.
- Please provide ideas on what kind of gifts to give science fair students and please help judge at the Science Fair, if possible.
- Get an appropriate room reserved at PSU for the May ExCom meeting

Attendees:
David Silver, Jose Garcia, Daniel Goodrich, Eric Hall, Alex Higgins, Mohammad Alshaiji, Richard Dorrance, Rick Smith, Diwakar Agrawal, Tatyana Dhaliwal, Ed Epp, Sohrab Aftabjahani

Minutes:
Meeting was called to order at 6:30pm.

New Business:
Rick - Fund raising - Matching funds from Intel for RAS activities. Intel is limiting the matching funds that it will provide per year per employee. Encourage Intel employees to put in their hours to get additional matching funds to offset just a few that had put in a lot of hours. Log the hours on a timely basis. It is not a main source of income for the Section, but it does help with providing robot kits and other things for activities.

Chapter problems - please let David know as he can help with some of the issues. Please be aware that Feb 10 is the reporting deadline for chapters. “High performing chapter" is at risk if reporting is not done timely.

Vtools voting. How did it go?
- Rick - there was not enough position statements to be found.
- Richard- Emails need to be clearer as to what the election is for. It was not very straightforward.
- Daniel- Some folks could not do certain activities.

Congressional Visits Day will be held 8-9 April 2025.
- There is an application process.
- It is a bit political with some prepared talking to do.

 IEEE Region 4 and Region 6 Joint Meeting will be held in San Francisco on 25 January 2025.
 - Ed will be attending to receive the Region 6 Outstanding IEEE Member Award for Outstanding Educator, Mentor or Facilitator in the area of STEM award.
 - David will also be attending.
 - Any business to raise to R6? Daniel- how to promote new membership? Diwakar says that he even has trouble providing a value add to Intel employees as to why to join IEEE. Sohrab- discounts to conferences. Richard- some employers already provide access to papers and pay for membership and conferences. Tatyana- member of honor societies can get hiring incentives at the federal government. Sohrab-being the part of a community is also important. Can we get a list of points of benefits, for different levels of their careers? IEEE likely already has some of these materials.

NWSE fair - The state fair will be held Friday 11 April 2025 at Portland State University.
- Richard can help organize but cannot help as he is lecturing on Fridays.
- IEEE gives several awards. Overall one. WIE award as well.
- Please consider to attend and help out.
- What kind of gifts to give science fair students? What do high schoolers want?

Milestones There are these all over the country but there's not yet one in Oregon. Goes through the IEEE History Center.
- The Willamette Falls milestone is progressing. We’ve budgeted for the plaque, are finalizing the plaque language, and will be seeking approval from ODOT and Oregon City.  Dan is leading the effort.
- There is also a milestone planned for Intel to recognize the USB development, although it has stalled. Dan G. will contact the milestone coordinator about its status, and may ask some Intel folks to help get it moving forward. Has to be 24/7 accessible.

Mailers- To send gifts to guest speakers. Richard and Sohrab took a few. They are wireless chargers for phones. Sustainability conference may also want some.

Officer and Society Chapter Reports:
Vice Chair - need to get inputs from Ed.
Treasurer - We are in good shape financially. Can help with student branches, as needed.
Secretary - Had a good handoff from previous secretary who also has said that he is available for further assistance as needed.

PACE
- Working on IEEE SusTech 2025 conference that will be held April 20-23, 2025 in LA.
- Best to get ahold of Rick via phone, text or call is fine. He is dividing his time between homes at the coast and Hillsboro.

Solid-State Circuits Society
- The chapter will receive the 2024 IEEE SSCS Chapter with Best Distinguished Lecturer Program Award and will be recognized at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, ISSCC 2025, the societies flagship conference, which is February 16-20, as well as published in the Spring issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine, and on the Society website and e-newsletter. This award recognizes a chapter that has consistently organized IEEE SSCS Distinguished Lectures (DL) and have invited a diverse roster of SSCS DL’s to visit their Chapter.
- Feb 25 is the tentative date for the next lecture and will get the event into vtools when the details finalize.

Robotics and Automation Society
- FIRST robotics challenge team at Benson HS. Created a girls build team with a kit and funds from Intel. Girls were deeply engaged and took ownership of their work. May not have enough time with the team as some teams meet daily and for longer.
- ROS2 (robotic operating system) is being built. There is a presentation available for the architecture. Perhaps this can be shared at the student branches?

Senior Member Elevation Coordination
- Diwakar can help organize. Good role modeling when officers are senior members as well so folks should work on the CV and materials.

Computer Society
- Had a talk on Halloween that was rescheduled to 5 December.
- Had a secretary but he went to India and not sure what is going on.
- Plan for at least one talk per quarter.

Power & Energy Society
- Brand new chair. Did a handoff with past chair.
- Have a speaker set up for February, but needs final confirmation. Will get event set up.
- Plan for meeting every third Tuesday.
- Daughter’s school Columbia Adventist in Battleground WA will have a career fair at some time and would like volunteers.

PSU student branch
- Have a student chapter plan for the year and planning for one a month. Next meeting this Friday.
- Resume event for the upcoming PSU hiring fair.
- Trying to get everyone under the same banner. Trying to get more graduate students involved as well as there are quite a few part time students. Please make sure that student events are in vTools.
- Alex- the student chapter needs to be reconstituted as an umbrella group for different technical chapters.
- Mohammed- would like to have guest speakers from industry. Daniel can provide a BPA tour in Vancouver-Up to 35 folks on a tour. How can students get more involved in technical societies. Tatyana-Corp of Engineers has a visit program at the Hydroelectric design center. Bonneville power may also have dam tours.
- Alex- it’s hard to get students involved in things.
- David- there used to be a newsletter that went out, especially to the students.
- Diwakar- IEEE has a lot of resources for students. Resume building and the like.
- Daniel- There is a role for student liaison. Someone to oversee all of the student branches.
- David- Proposal: Have an Excom meeting in May at PSU. Alex can get us a room.
- Ed- would like the contact for the student RAS chapter. Ed has robotics tutorials and whatnot that may be interesting to students. Alex can help get space to just a workshop.
- Networking and soft skills are also something that we can help students with.