Voting for PCS Administrative Committee Candidates

Published on September 22, 2012

IEEE Professional Communication Society will be holding the e-voting election of Administration Committee members soon.

The following people have been nominated for the Professional Communication Society’s Administrative Committee(AdCom). Each of the candidates was asked to respond to a set of questions. Please review their responses to these questions and then vote for the two candidates you would like to represent you this year.

The election Web page is open from October 16th to November 27th, 2012. Use the URL below to access the ballot and cast your vote now. Please make sure that your pop up blocker is off.

https://eballot3.votenet.com/IEEE_SE

Thomas (Tom) Ernst

General Electric

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

I am a Technical Application Engineer for General Electric, Digital Energy where I provide technical support for Digital Energy’s protection & control and automation products. Activities include pre and post-sales support as well as thought leadership activities such as training and technical conference support. My background includes 32 years working for electric utilities and 4 years as a consultant for substation and transmission design.

I am a life-long learner, having most recently completed my MS in power engineering at Michigan Technological University. I have written numerous white papers and technical guidelines and have spent my entire career teaching others what I have learned. In addition to daily training and support for fellow engineers and technicians, I am affiliated with several colleges and universities:

• adjunct faculty member at the Fond Du Lac Tribal and Community College, Cloquet, MN where I helped develop their Electric Utility Technology program and taught substation operations and control, and protective relay system testing and maintenance
• adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN where I teach review classes for the professional engineering exam
• instructor for University of Illinois’s Transmission Business School
• guest lecturer for Michigan Technological University’s power engineering classes

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

• Member – Power and Energy Society
• Member – Professional Communications Society
• Member – Education Society
• Past Chair – Membership Development, Arrowhead Section
• Member of writing group for P1547 “Standard for Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems”
• Past Chair – Twin Cities Section
• Past Chair – Power Engineering Society, Twin Cities Section
• Technical Tours Chair – 1990 Summer Power meeting – Mpls, MN.
• Registration Chair – 1988 Substation Committee meeting – Mpls, MN.
• IEEE Twin Cities Section Outstanding Engineer 2011.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

Past member – Midwest Reliability Organization’s PRC-005/008 subject matter expert group

Conference Chair – 1995 International Joint Power Generation Conference (sponsored by American Society of Mechanical Engineers) – Mpls, MN.

Past President – Northern States Power Engineers Association.

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

Becoming a member of the PCS AdCom will allow me to participate in the Society at the national level, assisting in standards development; Society management; and conference planning, management and execution. This will also provide me the experience needed to become an effective Society officer at some point in the future.

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

A minimum of 2 face-face meetings per year. Monthly virtual meetings. Weekly e-mail exchanges.

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

Member

Raymond E. Floyd

Innovative Insights, Inc.

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

Upon completing my military obligation, I entered industry as an electronic technician, working with Vitro Weapons Services and Philco-Ford. I joined IBM in 1966 as a technician, and worked my way up through their dual ladder career concept to the level of Senior Engineer. Along the way I picked up my undergraduate BSEE at Florida Institute of Technology, my MSEE at Florida Atlantic University while working on programs like APOLLO, the Anti-Ballistic Missile program, Product Test, manufacturing automation systems, and radio-frequency identification. I retired from IBM in 1992 and formed my own systems design company, Innovative Insights, working primarily in the RFID field. I also picked up my PhD in Management from California Coast University in 2009.

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

I have served as a Program Evaluator (PEV) for the Committee on Technology Accreditation Activities (CTAA) for 15 years. I have been a member of the CTAA for 7 years, with 2 years as Vice Chair, and am currently in my first year of a two year assignment as Chair of CTAA. From a PCS perspective, I have completed more than 35 book reviews for their Transactions over the past 10 years, as well as a couple articles for their newsletter.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

I am a Senior Member of SME, and a member of SPE. My work with both organizations has primarily been in the publication of papers for conferences or journal articles.

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

I would hope to help focus on the need for communications improvements for industry engineers, a major problem for the new graduate entering industry.

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

Depending on the financial burden, I will attend all meetings necessary to accomplish the work assigned. As a retiree, I cannot attend every meeting, without that consideration.

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

I am a IEEE Life Senior member.

Suguru Ishizaki

Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

I am an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Design in the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where I am responsible for developing and teaching courses on visual/multimedia design, user-centered design methods, and visual rhetoric that target professional & technical writing students both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. I also co-direct the joint Masters Program with the School of Design in Communication Planning and Information Design. I regularly advice masters and doctoral students whose projects are related to design and communication inside and outside of my department—including Human Computer Interaction, Design, and Architecture. My current research projects include computer-aided corpus-based rhetorical analysis, intelligent critiquing systems, and visual-verbal rhetoric. My professional experience includes user-experience design, software development, product management, and visual/multimedia design. I have a PhD and MS in Visual Studies from MIT Media lab, and Bachelor of Art and Design from the University of Tsukuba, Japan. I am the author of Improvisational Design: Continuous Responsive Digital Communication (MIT Press, 2003), and a co-author of The Power of words: Unveiling the Speaker and Writer’s Hidden Craft (Erlbaum 2004) and Arab Women in Arab News: Old Stereotypes and New Media (Bloomsbury 2012).

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

I joined the IEEE PCS in 2009 year, and I have been a member of AdCom since January 2010. I have served as the Chair of the Electronic Information Committee (EIC) since January 2011. In this capacity as the EIC chair, I have been responsible for the management of the PCS website, and recently led the new PCS website project. I have also been a member of the content committee for disseminating research in professional and technical communication to practitioners and educators in engineering. I have also been serving as a webmaster for IPCC 2012, and IPCC 2013. I have served as a reviewer for IPCC conferences since 2010, as well as for the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

I was a program committee member for ACM Creativity and Cognition 2009 and ACM Design for Interactive Systems 2000. I have been a reviewer for Technical Communication Quarterly, and several conferences, including ACM CHI and ACM CSCW, and TEI (Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction), and books and book chapters on visualization and document design. I am also an editorial board member of Design Issues; and a member of AIGA. In addition, I have been an elected board member of the Pittsburgh Mandolin Society since January 2010, and served as its vice president in the past 2 years.

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

Considering the increasing complexity of communication media and technology in the professional environment, I believe a longer population in the technical professions will benefit from PCS’s activities in the future. Based on my broad experience both in academia and industry, I would like to help PCS communicate its value to scholars, educators, and practitioners who are working in relevant disciplines, yet, have not discovered PCS; and encourage them to participate in PCS and its conferences. In addition, as a researcher with broad research interests, I am interested in sustaining the scholarly excellence of PCS. As a practitioner with a scholarly orientation, I am interested in assuring the dialogue between research and practice within PCS. As an educator, I am committed to enhancing the communication literacy of future professionals through PCS’s activities.

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

I will attend all the meetings.

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

IEEE Member

Kanitkar V.J.

Retired PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER/Consultant

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

I have retired from active service in manufacturing industries dealing with LV Control gear for over 3 decades in India.
Now leading active professional networking here in Singapore.

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

For over three decades of IEEE membership I have been volunteering in Section activities in various capacities in different sections as below
Delhi Section Ex com Member, Asst. Secretary, Treasurer,
And as EX Com member in Gujarat, Bombay, Madras and Singapore section

I have been looking forward to volunteering in PCS which so far does not have local presence.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

Life Fellow Institution of Engineers India

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

• Improve the local presence of the PCS
• Identify and promote involvement of practicing professionals in IEEE Encourage the same thro motivational measures

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

As many as possible through my limited means

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

Senior Member through 1983 looking forward to Life status this year end

Andreas Karatsolis

Carnegie Mellon University Qatar

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

I am an Assistant Professor of English at the Carnegie Mellon Qatar campus teaching courses in Professional Communication and Information Design. Additionally, I am the Director of the Eberly center for Teaching Excellence at our campus, responsible for faculty development and curriculum development issues. Both of these roles help me combine my strong concern for pedagogy with my interest in global technical communication, especially as it relates to establishing greater connections between industry and academia in a rapidly growing region such as the Middle East.. For these efforts I was recently awarded a substantial grant from Qatar National Research Fund to develop online modules on technical communication both for students and early engineering professionals. I am also actively involved in developing technologies for learning, especially as it relates to technologies for writing and collaborative practices.

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

As a relatively new member of PCS, I have not had the opportunity to be actively involved in activities other than serving as a reviewer and attending the conferences. However, in collaboration with Suguru Ishizaki from the CMU main campus, we are currently preparing a proposal to host the 2014 IPCC jointly between Pittsburgh and Doha, Qatar, which means that I will be co-chairing the conference.

As far as my broader involvement in IEEE is concerned, I was actively involved in professional communication workshops for engineering professionals several years ago at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

I am a member of ATTW and was in the 2011 Conference Program Committee. I have been a reviewer for ATTW a number of years, as well as for two special issues of TCQ and one issue of JBTC. I have also been a member of SIGDOC and recently became involved in the European chapter of SIGDOC by attending their conference and participating in special interest groups.

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

My appointment with Carnegie Mellon in the Middle East as well as my ongoing research position me well to contribute to the PCS AdCom in three distinct ways:

• Help expand the reach of the organization to areas such as the Gulf region, the broader Arab world and India, where global business is now thriving and the need for technically-oriented professionals with good communication skills is great.
• Work at establishing a greater connection between academia and industry professionals, especially in terms of expanding the web presence of the organization and building a stronger online community. Additionally, I believe there are opportunities to engage industry professionals more through face-to-face seminars and workshops at a global scale.
• Support efforts related to a greater understanding and pedagogical innovation in global technical communication and practice, especially for professionals and students who are non-native speakers of English. My involvement with the CMU center for Teaching Excellence positions me well in bringing insights from the learning sciences into technical communication pedagogy.

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

I can attend all meetings.

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

My current membership grade is member.

Kevin Novak

The American Institute of Architects

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

I am the Vice President, New Business Development and Digital Strategies for the American Institute of Architects. In this role, I am responsible for leading the digital strategy and new business development for the Institute and its 280 chapters throughout the World. The role includes all aspects of web and technology and spans major web based system development, major internal system development, state of the art networking and telecommunications infrastructure (including VOIP and Video Conferencing), and front facing/consumer focused web interfaces and experiences (including social media, social networking, and apps). The role additionally includes developing new products, business lines and revenues streams for the Institute.

I was previously the Director of Web Services for the United States Library of Congress. In this role I developed the centralized web program for the institution which is focused on managing, developing and maintaining on of the largest websites in the World with over 22 digitized items from the collections, a dozen search technologies and millions of dynamic and static web pages. I was responsible for the access goals of the National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program, Lead the Library’s relationship with Internet2, and lead the development of web and technical architecture and interface strategies for the World Digital Library Project and the Library of Congress Interactive Experience.

I served Montgomery County Government for 10 years in a variety of positions including Technical Services Manager and Electronic Government Manager.

I have recently served as a consultant to the World Bank eTransform initiative and developed the fundraising strategy and research for raising 20 million USD to fund the World Bank’s Project Development Facility which is focused on delivering project based development and assistance in web based systems.

Given my years in Federal and Local government, I maintain extensive involvement in the electronic government and open government arena including a strong focus and level of activity related to the use of open web and technological standards, the semantic web, interoperability and the challenges and solutions with legacy based data and archives.

I am a recognized author and speaker in the electronic/open government space. As a result, I am currently chairing a panel for the National Academies for the National Science Foundation. The panel is focused on the dissemination and communication of scientific and engineering data for the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. In this role, I have lead the expert panel and additional expert resources, through study and workshops, to produce a report which is due to be published by the National Academies in September 2011.

I hold a Master of Science in Technology Management from the University of Maryland.

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

I have served a year on the PCS AdCOM leading the marketing and social media efforts to bring greater awareness to PCS, its mission and strengthening its relevance.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

I belong to several professional organizations including the World Wide Web Consortium, Project Management Institute, American Management Association and the Web Analytics Association.

I have been most active in the World Wide Web Consortium. I held a co-chair position of the Electronic Government Workgroup for 3 years (2008-2011) and served as an Advisory Council representative (equivalent to a Board member role) for the same time period. In this role I led a diverse and international group of 150 government and technological experts focused on the identification, development, education and communication of open web standards, solutions and approaches which would allow developed and developing countries to achieve their goals of increasing constituent participation, availability of online services, and publishing of government data. The resulting work has been used in governments around the World and most successfully by the United States Government and the Government of the United Kingdom. The greatest achievement of the group was to produce many documents that allowed the technical community to communicate and share information and value to leaders, managers, and business owners throughout organizations.

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

My professional (paid and volunteer) activities and focus allow me the opportunity to lead and interact with technical and non-technical communities and efforts. Given such, I have honed skills and abilities to act as the medium within and between the technical and business focused communities championing the value of technologies and technological approaches which equate to defined and documented business value.

My background has afforded me the opportunity to develop strong skills in communications and particularly those that are web focused. I have been the spokesperson for the Montgomery County Year 2000 Project Office with all major media outlets, the media contact for the Library of Congress website and its many subsites including Thomas.gov, and the spokesperson for the W3C Electronic Government Workgroup. As a result, I am able to communicate and interact complex technical information in forms that allow very non-technical audiences to understand.

I also bring a wealth of experience and knowledge in open web standards, the government community, open data including linked data (semantic web), and data visualization approaches and challenges.

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

I will attend all meeting to which I am required to attend. I want to contribute to IEEE and PCS, ensure I am having an impact, and am able to share my skills, abilities and efforts to the goals of the organization.

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

Full Member

Darlene Webb

British Columbia Institute of Technology

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

My name is Darlene Webb, and I am a full-time instructor of technical communication at a two-year college, British Columbia Institute of Technology, in Burnaby, BC, Canada. My primary teaching load is for mechanical engineering diploma students, and it is a job I love. I teach a first-year introductory communication course as well as a second-year course which is integrated with the students’ capstone design project. Students often have industry sponsors for their second-year projects; BCIT prides itself on its ties with industry and on giving students job-ready skills. The nature of my teaching is practical.

I initiated an Engineers Without Borders campus club in 2010 and remain faculty supervisor for it. This is the most challenging part of my job as EWB clubs are not typically found at two-year schools and the idea of service learning is not one that has been developed on campus. This is slow and very humbling work.

Two of my colleagues and I initiated and continue to deliver an annual presentation competition for engineering students at BCIT called “Presentation Idol for Engineering Students”; we intend to present on this initiative at next year’s ASEE conference. The unique aspect of this competition is that we three communication instructors ourselves set about asking companies and organizations to contribute to the prize pool and to fund the event.

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

• I’ve been an IEEE PCS member since 2008 and attended my first PCS conference in 2009 where I presented a paper about co-operative learning strategies in first-year communication courses.
• In 2011, I helped with program work for the Cincinnati conference.
• This year, I am one of the proceedings editors for the 2012 conference in Florida.
• I am also program co-chair, together with Dr. Carolyn Labun, for the 2013 IPCC in Vancouver, BC.
• I read IEEE Spectrum magazine regularly and often use it as a teaching aid in my classes.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

I am also a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and attend their annual conference. I co-presented a panel discussion at their 2010 conference. This spring, my colleagues and I presented at the Pacific Northwest Chapter of ASEE about our Presentation Idol initiative and we plan to submit a paper to their conference next year in Atlanta, GA.

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

• I would like to work on spreading the word about PCS to colleges and universities in western Canada and encouraging membership growth.
• I am good at taking direction and would like to offer a two-year college perspective as PCS events and activities are planned.
• I can continue to help with annual conference planning; I am particularly interested in welcoming papers and work relating to service learning, social media and analyses of the power structures that it both destroys and builds, and cooperative learning.

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

I can attend online meetings and face-to-face meetings as long as they do not conflict with teaching classes. The teaching load at BCIT is particularly heavy and it is not possible to take days off during the semester for conferences, meetings, etc. However, the professional development fund at BCIT is generous and as long as face-to-face meetings or conferences are held in June, July, or August, the likelihood of me attending in person is good. Online meetings are usually not problematic.

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

I am a member.

Peter Eliot Weiss, BA, MFA, PhD

University of Toronto

1. Who are you and what do you do in your career?

I am a senior lecturer at the University of Toronto and the Director of the Engineering Communication Program in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.

As a lecturer, my predominant focus is on teaching communication skills to undergraduate engineers; I do some research, however, in adapting critical thinking skill instruction specifically for engineering and, as well, exploring the effectiveness of undergraduate engineering communication instruction.

As a creative writer, I have written over a dozen plays which have been professionally produced in Canada, the US and other countries.

2. What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?

I reviewed conference submissions in 2011 and 2012.

3. What other professional organizations do you belong to, and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?

Currently, in addition to PCS, I belong to the Canadian Association for Studies in Discourse and Writing (CASDW), Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE). I am a member of Canadian Access (formerly CanCopy) and served on their Board of Directors from 1996 to 2000 (as Co-chair in the last two years of that). I also served on the Board of Directors of the Playwrights Union of Canada, and was president of the organization from 1994 to 1996.

4. What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?

I have a lot of practical administrative and teaching experience. While I explore widely in media and cultural areas, in the end, I like to be able to apply what I find to the direct problem of enabling students to improve their communication skills to professional levels. I think my practicality is my greatest strength and it is what I believe I would contribute to meetings and to the well-being of the organization.

5. How many meetings will you attend each year?

I intend to attend all three meetings.

6. What is your current IEEE membership grade?

Member