IEEE Education Society as part of the IEEE Division VI: A Time to be Actively Horizontal

The IEEE Education Society is one of the seven Societies that belong to IEEE Division VI. The other Societies in Division VI include the Industrial Electronics Society, Professional Communications Society, Product Safety Engineering Society, Reliability Society, Social Implications of Technology Society, and Technology and Engineering Management Society. These seven Societies are home to more than 17,000 members, and over 1,700 of these members belong to two or more Division VI Societies.

As you all know, since March, times have been complicated. We’ve all experienced changes both personally and professionally, and in our relationships with institutions, professional Societies, and of course, with our involvement in IEEE. Our travel has decreased, but our increased involvement in webinars and videoconference meetings has changed our model of relation, collaboration, and participation. These changes have given us more time for some things, less for others, and in general, they have impacted our everyday lives. We have adopted a different way of participating in activities, which has led to a loss of human and personal direct connections, but has also given us the ability to be anywhere, at any moment, and granted us the opportunity to attend all kinds of activities and events at reduced costs of participation, other than our time and our Internet connection costs (and our equipment, of course). With all of this in mind, we can use this unique opportunity to be present in a lot of new arenas, conferences, events, etc., where we can bring new information and find new synergies for all of our members and colleagues around the world.

The various Division VI societies have Fields of Interest that are important to all of our seven Societies and well as to all IEEE members. The Division VI Fields of Interest can add value to any IEEE member and society. Our Division’s chapter meetings, conferences, and publications are unique in the IEEE because our Society's Fields of Interest are relevant for all IEEE Societies. The typical IEEE Society has a somewhat self-contained (vertical) Field of Interest, which is what makes IEEE great and successful. Division VI should work to continue adding its ever-developing horizontal Fields of Interest, the much needed 'professional skills' (so-called soft skills), to the overall IEEE Field of Interest, to benefit all IEEE members and Societies. In order to facilitate the Division VI Fields of Interest across the IEEE, we have joined together to offer our Fields of Interest to all IEEE conferences and Society events. We began this initiative last year, and need to continue moving forward with it in the future.

I have nearly completed my two-year term as Division VI Director (my term finishes 31 December 2020, and the current Division VI Director-Elect, Paul Cunningham will be the new Director for 2021 and 2022). In my first year, I visited three Societies during their AdCom or BoG meetings at their main conferences, and I planned to visit a couple more in-person during the 2020 year, but because the pandemic virtualized many events, I was able to visit the other four online during their meetings in May and June. It was a really good time to see their work during their meetings with their executive committees. A big thank you to all of these Societies for their time and for allowing me to participate in their daily administrative time. All of these actions bring us new ways to connect more in-depth with our members by showing our feasible level of synergy and connection.

Now is the time for connection, the time for synergy, and the time for our Division VI societies to share experiences, best practices, ways to collaborate, and activities to perform. We can share these experiences all together, two-by-two, or in any combination, because we have a lot of actions we can collaborate on, and a lot of areas to learn and share. We lost several events and scenarios this year for joint actions, like the IEEE Section Congress, and all the face-to-face actions during events and conferences, but we can still utilize the opportunities for online events, as we did for EDUNINE, EDUCON, LWMOOCS, and as we will for FIE and TALE. This new hybrid world has become a part of us and will likely remain a part of us for many years. In this time, we must use our resources, webinars, conferences (which are now open to many more attendees), awards, and standards, to collaborate and share experiences, as well as continuing in improving our forums to our chapters, because local connections are really important for engaging our members, and in other groups where we are not currently very active like Young Professionals, Women in Engineering, and in Doctoral symposiums.

Take care! And as always, if you have any comments you can access me through my email, [email protected].

Manuel Castro
IEEE Division VI Director