I don’t think I can effectively make a claim about the whole of the IEEE.
But since I have been a very active volunteer in the EMC Society for many years, and am not a part of academia, I think I can accurately cite a few facts with regard to the value of the EMC Society to a few of us outside academia. The Society’s transactions have been an extremely valuable resource to our company in many areas of hardware design, troubleshooting, and training for many years. There are 20 or 30 different papers over the past few years that are cornerstones of modern EMC design. While I would agree that many more “academics” than “working engineers” (whatever that means, many academics work and come into contact with working hardware :-)) publish in the Transactions, I am thankful and indebted to them for obtaining research funding and finding colleagues to commit the time necessary to clean out obsolete beliefs and to develop and clarify principles that they carefully explain in theory, predict in advance, and finally prove with actual physical models. With regards to Spectrum – if Spectrum gives the IEEE the opportunity to derive income by running ads for academic positions, and then this resulting revenue benefits the IEEE by providing support the EMC Society, I am all for academic ads in Specrum. I admit that I find many more articles that are interesting to me in Spectrum than in the Transactions, but articles in Spectrum don’t help me understand a customer’s noise problem or teach a class. So if I were to comment on the IEEE’s advertising policy I would say that the academic job postings should be in the Transactions! Best Regards Lee SILENT 10 Northern Boulevard, Suite 1 Amherst, NH 03031 USA +1-603-578-1842 (v) [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bender, Curtis Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 7:07 PM To: Price, Edward; [email protected] Subject: RE: iNARTE PS or IEEE Thank you Ed and to all that have sent replies – both on the forum and offline. I greatly value all of your input and suggestions. Curt Curtis Bender | 616.994.4221 | [email protected] ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Price, Edward Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 9:09 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: iNARTE PS or IEEE ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ted Eckert Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 2:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: iNARTE PS or IEEE I am both an IEEE member and an iNARTE certified Product Safety Engineer. For both, I have found the value to be commensurate with the effort I have put into my membership. I have been an IEEE member for about 20 years. For much of that time, it was nothing more than a very expensive magazine subscription for me. Many see IEEE as an academically oriented organization and that is what it has become in recent years. I remember seeing an IEEE Spectrum article from a number of years ago showing that 35 years ago, the majority of papers submitted for IEEE publication came from people in industry. Now, the vast majority come from academia. Ted Eckert Compliance Engineer One Microsoft Way Redmond WA, 98052 (425) 707-9205 [email protected] Ted touches on a raw subject about the IEEE. Almost 35 years ago, there was a strong challenge to the existing IEEE structure addressing that exact question. Academia and management won, the "working engineer" lost. Certainly the reasons were more complex than the arguments, but one key aspect to understand is that "working engineers" were usually too busy with their own careers to put much personal time and effort into volunteering for the IEEE, especially at a time when the IEEE was growing beyond the USA. My subjective observation was that the greater the presence in the IEEE, the further a person was from the "working engineer" category. Another important reason for the shift of the IEEE focus is that academic types need to publish, establishing that printed record of their work. The IEEE Transactions and Spectrum were ideal venues, hungry for papers that could establish their "professional" status among publications and a great conduit for those wishing to get published. Again, my subjective view is that the Transactions became useless to me, a quarterly shipment of smoke in a green binder. Spectrum was also remarkably stuffy, although it has been vastly improved in the past year or so. Obviously, these are personal opinions. However, for those looking for metrics, try counting up the ads in Spectrum. How many ads are looking for radar engineers (pick you category of "working engineer") and how many are looking for academic positions. These ads are placed by people who spend their money expecting results, and they professionally understand who Spectrum reaches. You might begin to wonder if the IEEE shouldn't change its name to reflect truth in advertising. Ed Price [email protected] <blocked::mailto:[email protected]> WB6WSN NARTE Certified EMC Engineer Electromagnetic Compatibility Lab Cubic Defense Applications San Diego, CA USA 858-505-2780 Military & Avionics EMC Is Our Specialty - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc Graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. can be posted to that URL. 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Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <[email protected]> David Heald <[email protected]> - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc Graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. can be posted to that URL. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <[email protected]> David Heald <[email protected]>
