C16. Section Vitality Report

The following is a summary of my activities since last year’s R1 BoG Summer Meeting:

Based on a request from MGA Staff last August 2016 regarding a situation in the New Jersey Coast Section (NJCS), I contacted the NJC Section Chair, Newman Wilson. I asked to be invited to his September 2016 Executive Committee meeting to observe the meeting and offered to assist with the nominations and election process and questions regarding performing a Section Audit. After last summer’s BoG meeting Bala Prasanna, R1 Treasurer requested all R1 Section Chairs to conduct a financial audit of their respective Sections and affiliated Society Chapters.

On September 2, 2016 I sent out a “Nominations Committee and Elections Process Guidelines” to all Region 1 Section Chairs.

 Based on feedback from R1 leadership and several Section Chairs I distributed a revised “Nominations Committee and Elections Process Guidelines” on September 9th , with the offer to help any Section Chair with this process. These “Guidelines” are now on the Region 1 website thanks to Dr. Greg Gdowski.

On September 23, 2016 I met with the NJC Section Chair and the North Jersey Section Chair after a North Jersey Section Milestone Ceremony on Weston Meters. We met for over two hours to discuss several issues and concerns the NJC Section Chair was experiencing in his Section.

Subsequent to the September 2016 meeting I had many discussions and exchanged many e-mails with the NJC Section Chair and several members of the NJCS Executive Committee. The main focus was to establish a nominations and elections process in the Section.

All of the discussions and meetings culminated in my attendance at the January 12, 2017 NJCS Executive Committee meeting. At that meeting the NJCS Excom voted to approve a proposed slate of officers, which started the election process.

Subsequent to the 1/12/17 NJCS Excom meeting an election ballot was created in vTools by some members of the NJCS Excom.

Due to some technical issues a decision was made by MGA and our R1 Director to postpone the elections. An interim Board of R1 leaders was then created to further resolve the election issues.

 SECTION VITALITY

 In order to determine “Section Vitality” or the activity of each Section in Region 1 I used the number of meetings reported in the IEEE vTools application for each Section as my metrics. I created a spreadsheet report in May 2016 listing all the vTools meetings reported by the 22 Sections of Region 1 for years 2014 and 2015. In that report seven (7) SectionsMid-Hudson, Mohawk Valley, Schenectady, Binghamton, Buffalo, Syracuse and Ithaca were barely active with less than five (5) meetings per year. Ithaca Section reported no meetings in vTools in 2014 and 2015 and the Mid-Hudson Section reported no meetings in 2015. After contacting the Section Chairs of these Sections it was determined that many of the Sections were active but failed to report their meeting activity in vTools. I recommended that these Sections use vTools to schedule and record their meetings and offered to help train them in the process.

 Attached is my Section Vitality Report as of June 8, 2017 comparing vTools meetings reported for years 2015, 2016 and 2017 year-to-date for all 22 Sections of Region 1.  The spreadsheet also compares the previous Section “Rating” in May 2016 vs. the current Section “Rating” of June 2017.  The May 2016 Rating is based on the complete 2015 meeting year and the current 2017 Rating is based on the entire 2016 meeting year. See the bottom of the attached report for the definition of each rating number. I’m happy to report that most Sections have improved their “Vitality Rating” from last year and there are only five (5) Sections now with 5 or less meetings per year, which means that the majority of R1 Sections are using the vTools application to report their meeting activity. I stand ready to help train these Sections and any other Section on how to schedule their meetings or events in the vTools Meeting application.

 Congratulations goes to the North Jersey Section with 158 meetings held in 2015, 153 meetings held in 2016 and 62 meetings held in 2017 as of June 8, 2017!

 C16 Region 1 Vitality Coordinator Report_vTools_June 2017(1)

Bob Pellegrino
R1 Section Vitality Coordinator
bobpellegrino@ieee.org