SOCIETY NEWS
Call for Nominations - Board of Governors and Officers
The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) needs to elect new Governors and Officers to begin serving the Society in 2008. Hence, I am calling on you to nominate candidates for these elections.
As a member of our Society, you are in an excellent position to ascertain the strengths of your fellow member colleagues and where they would best fit to serve the Circuits and Systems Society. CASS is a volunteer-based organization. Hence, it is in our best interest to have engaged and energetic officers who will continue to lead us and organize events that are of benefit to our members.
There are two yearly elections: the election of the Board of Governors and the election of the Society Officers:
Board of Governors
Five members of the CAS Society are elected each year by the society at large to serve on the Board of Governors for 3-year terms. The Board of Governors represents the members of the Society and approves the Society's annual budget and amendments to the Constitution and Bylaws, elects Society Officers, and authorizes the expenditure of Society funds. Members of the Board of Governors are expected to attend two annual meetings (usually immediately preceding ISCAS in May and ICCAD in November). Board of Governors nominations must be received by June 15, 2007.
Society Officers
Each year, the members of the Board of Governors elect a president-elect and certain of the vice presidents for the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. The officer positions to be filled starting January 2008 will be President-elect, Vice President Conferences, Vice President Technical Activities, Vice President Regions 8 and Vice President Region 9. The President-elect is for a one-year term (serving subsequently as President in 2009) and the others are for a two-year term (2008-2009). Officer nominations must be received by September 1, 2007.
Nomination Process
A slate of candidates is created in two ways, one being the nomination by petition process. A valid nomination by petition, according to the IEEE rule, is guaranteed to be on the ballot. The Nominations Committee also participates in the process and may add to the slate of candidates. Upon receipt of all nominations, the Nominations Committee will submit at least eleven candidates for society-wide election of the five Board members. Nominations must be received by June 15, 2007. Officer nominations must be received by September 1, 2007.
The new IEEE rule regarding the nomination petition process states: "For all positions where the electorate is less than 30,000 voting members, signatures shall be required from 2% of the eligible voters." "The number of signatures required on a petition shall depend on the number of eligible voters, as listed in the official IEEE membership records, at the end of the year preceding the election"
For CASS, this implies that we need 207 signatures for the 2007 elections, excluding students and affiliates, on a petition in order for a candidate to be automatically placed on the election ballot. Note: For the first time, graduate student members are eligible to sign a petition as well as vote in the election.
In order to accommodate the petitioning process, IEEE has established a web based petitioning system that will automatically authenticate petition "signatures."
The CASS Society will utilize this system. We will provide a URL for our members as soon as it is available.
Nominators should indicate if the name of the nominated candidate is to be placed on the petition site for collecting petitions and/or if the nomination is meant for consideration by the Nominations Committee.
Nomination forms, along with a position statement, can be used to mail the nomination to the address given below. Note that e-mailed and faxed forms will not be accepted. Electronic copies of these forms can downloaded from
The Nominations Committee greatly encourages you to recommend suitable candidates for our office positions. Our strength as a society is not only in our engineering expertise, but also in our societal spirit including the sharing of information with each other. This we can do best when we have a strong organization with engaged members.
IEEE CAS Japan Chapter
The IEEE CAS Tokyo Chapter was established in 1971 when there was only one Tokyo Section in Japan. In 1998, seven new Sections were founded to better serve the members and Tokyo Section became smaller. The Tokyo Section now has 7500 members, which is largest among all the Sections in Japan. There are total 13000 IEEE members including 630 CAS members in Japan. In 1999 IEEE Japan Council was formed by the agreement of 8 Sections (now 9; new Shin-etsu Section was formed in 2006) as a subordinate committee. At that time all the chapters under the former Tokyo Section were moved to Japan Council to cover the whole Japan. Since then, the CAS Japan Chapter has been trying to break up to more local Chapters. Last year (2006) the CAS Shikoku Chapter was established, and now there are 3 CAS Chapters in addition to the CAS Japan Chapter, which is the largest among all the Societies in Japan. In addition to daily Chapter activities like meetings, lectures, conferences, the CAS Japan Chapter encourages members to establish their CAS (or joint) Chapters in their local Sections, if they don't have one yet. The ultimate goal of the CAS Japan Chapter is to dissolve itself after all the Sections in Japan have their CAS Chapters.
