Engineers Week

The Boston Engineers Week activities are now over. I think that they were very successful in spite of our concerns that the economic downturn might put damper on things. We had over twenty five company tables in the Career Fair on Thursday February 12th and over two hundred students were looking for jobs. A number of volunteers staffed the IEEE table spreading the word about the benefits of joining the IEEE. Thank you Rob Vise, Ted Kachanski, Palo Pierce and Jim Matthiesen for giving your time to the IEEE cause!

I made a point of asking as many attendees as possible for their impressions of the event. The response was overwhelmingly positive from both company representatives and from students. In fact the only mild criticism I heard was from a couple of Oceanic Engineers who pointed out that there were not many job opportunities for them at the companies participating. However they said they didn't really expect any!

The next day was the Luncheon when over 280 engineers, managers and students listened to Helen Greiner talk about a career in Robots and Amy Smith talk about a career in simple inventions that help the people of the Third World. Many awards were presented to enthusiastic youngsters who had decided to participate in engineering or science projects.

Next year I must involve more IEEE volunteers to raise the public profile of the IEEE organization. However I did meet Michael Smith of the ASME and agreed to work with him to put on joint events with our two organizations.