Members Present: Larry Burton, Ken Jenkins, Kevin Kelly, Jack Mitchell, David Salvia, Fred Thompson, and Mark Wharton

Mark opened the meeting at 7:00pm.  He had an agenda with 8 topics.

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Topic 1.  New Committee Member
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Mark introduced David Salvia as the new SPSEE Secretary.  David is replacing Kathy Muhonen who had moved from the area.

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Topic 2.  High School Recruiting
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Harry Bell, who was absent, reported through Mark that he had enough volunteers to cover the Spring 2001 High School recruiting telephone calls.

The University's recruiting seminar will be held Feb 24 at 9:30 AM at the Nittany Lion Inn.

Recruiting packets have reportedly already been sent to the phone callers.

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Topic 3.  Guest Speaker for SPSEE SP01 General Meeting
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Ray Lunnen, who was absent, requested through Mark that the committee decide on a speaker for the SP01 General Meeting.  Two choices were:

• Woody Seifert - PSU EE Alum and Engineer from FireOne, the local company that designs automated firework display equipment.  He has a very interesting demo that he can show.
• Accuweather - presentation possibly followed by a tour of the Accuweather facility.

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Topic 4.  EPICS
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Ken Jenkins gave an update on the EPICS project.  Currently, 3 teams are working on charity-related projects as part of their senior design courses.

• Team 1:  3 EE students/ 2 ME students -- working with Agribility to design a mechanism that will allow a handicapped farmer to mount/operate his farm equipment
• Team 2: All ME students -- working with Agribility to design an adaptive crawler for a handicapped infant
• Team 3:  no information is available at this time

Ken Jenkins further reported that there are now 7 schools coupled to the National EPICS program at Purdue.  A 3 year grant was recently awarded through the US government.  Each of the 3 new schools (including PSU) was given $20K, with an obligation by each school to provide matching funds.

A question was raised regarding SPSEE's involvement in EPICS.  Two ways that we can help the program are

• by helping to identify projects and/or agencies
• possibly providing some monetary support

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Topic 6.  EE Website Feedback
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The EE Department Climate Committee asked for SPSEE help in providing external feedback about our web pages (content, look, navigability, etc).  Primarily we are looking for feedback from HS Juniors and Seniors.

Both Fred Thompson and Larry Burton said that they had relatives who may be willing to examine our site and provide feedback.

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Topic 7.  New Member Recruiting
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Mark stressed the importance of expanding our recruiting efforts to get new blood in SPSEE.  Some suggestions were:

• asking present members to each recruit 1 new member
• increasing the visibility of EPICS, since this may attract new members
• focusing on local members, since they are more likely to get involved
• we could utilize the IEEE membership list
• we could utilize the PSES list (provided by Cindy Jones)
• advertising SPSEE to current EE 403 students, since they will all be graduating soon

Next meeting:
General Meeting -- May 18, 2001
Planning Committee Meeting -- early April