The February section meeting had good attendance with Don Bammes of Stronwell-Quazite gave an excellent presentation on “Understanding Underground Enclosures”. Mr. Bammes presentation covered the most recent changes in the NEC code as they apply to underground enclosures, 

Our future section meetings will be on April27, September28 and December 7. We look forward to your attendance, as the meeting is an opportunity to promote networking and information sharing. Please take a moment of your time to look at the Houston Section website and join our e-mail majordomo-mailing list, instructions are on the website. Any suggestions about improvements would be greatly appreciated. The address of the website is http://www.ieee-houston.org/. We have a local employment assistance section on the website and seek employment opportunities that you may come to your attention. We post ads from individual members seeking employment opportuni­ties, employers seeking engineers and employment agencies.

In addition, April also brings the Region 5 Technical and Leadership Conference which will be in San Antonio April 7-9. I have always found this conference to be a very enjoyable experience and I expect this year to be no different. This meeting is a great opportunity to learn and to network with other colleagues. I am looking forward to meeting as many colleagues as possible from other Sections as well as Region 5 Committee leaders.

Looking to May we have the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) on May 1-4 at the Reliant Center where we will again set up a booth to promote IEEE. We have already had several members volunteer to help us man these booths but we still have open slots and we can always use more volunteers. Please take this opportunity to volunteer, as these conferences are great ways to meet other engineers and network. If you are interested in volunteering, please give Paul J Donner 713-945-7771 a call or send an e-mail to pj.donner@CenterPointEnergy.com

Our Fourth Annual IEEE Houston Section Scholarship Golf Tournament held at Kingwood Country Club on October 27, 2005 was a complete success. Based on the success of this tournament, we will award four to five (4-5) $1000 scholarships this year. The deadline for submitting an application form and all supporting data is July 14, 2006. Scholarships will be announced by August 4, 2006, and winner(s) will be honored at the September 28, 2006 Houston Section meeting. All application material will be posted on the website by the first of May.

As always, the Executive Committee and I look forward to your feedback and comments. If you have suggestions and/or are interested in becoming active within the section or a local society chapter, contact one of us. The IEEE is a volunteer organization and without the active participation and feedback from you the members, the programs and content of the IEEE would be reduced.