HOU Sec Chair Kheng Swee Goh – Farewell Address to the Houston Section Membership

“How time flies! It was Thanksgiving, and we’ve already had its first snow! And before long, it will be Christmas and another year!”

Every time when we come to this time of year, one of my favorite songs starts playing in my mind – “Try to Remember” by Josh Groban. We’ve definitely had some good times this year, and for me personally, I’ve absolutely enjoyed serving you as Chair for the past 2 years. It’s now time for me to hand the baton over to our current Vice Chair; you may have seen e-notices from her from time to time – Alice Wang. Our new Vice Chair is also no stranger to us all, CB Sanderson. Our current Treasurer, Donald Dunn; has done a great job balancing and reporting our budgets and accounts. So there will be no change in that position. Meanwhile, I will continue to serve the board as Past Chair, and will also be helping out the committee throughout the coming years.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to our committee and members; who’ve taken time from their personal lives to contribute to the Section and the Electrical Engineering community.

Here are a few accomplishments we’ve done as we look back in the past 2 years (2015 – 2017):

• New Houston technical chapters created: Robotics & Automation Society, Control Systems Society, Communication Society.
• Improved membership tracking: we added tracking info on every meeting track exact numbers of our Houston IEEE membership, down to the individual society level.
• Improved speaker line-ups: we have gradually improved the quality of our speakers and topics (check out our January topic!)
• Highlights on outreach and STEM: We’ve sponsored the IEEE MOVE training and Boys Scouts Jamboree
• Student chapter support: We’ve (re)started the student chapter competitions for students attending the monthly meetings. Invited students to join our dinner and talks at no charge. Sponsored IEEExtreme and other local student chapter events (Chili cook-off, Grillfest…etc)
• Young Professionals: We organized STEP and other fun events for the Young Professionals.
• IEEE Day: We’ve organized special social events on IEEE day.
• Committee Retreats: We’ve started organizing committee retreats to pull all chapter and committee leaders together for group training and brainstorming.
• New Meeting Venue: We started using United Way as an alternate meeting venue
• Too many to list them all!!

I’d also like to thank all of those who enjoyed our last meeting on December 7 (the “Holiday Celebration” meeting). We had such a turn out that everyone had to squeeze in and be a little more “cozy” and getting to know each “a little better” in our meeting room. But it turned out great. I’m also very pleased to see everyone enjoyed wining and dining that night, with food catered by Peli Peli and our special range of wine from France, Argentina, New Zealand and California.

As we move forward to the next year, we will continue to make everything BETTER than before. If you have not been to our events for a while, we encourage you to come check us out; or if you’d like to play a more active role in IEEE, we welcome you to volunteer to the group! While the title says “farewell”, it’s only because I’m stepping down as Chair. But you will continue to see me at our monthly meetings and (especially) socials! So, I will say, “see ya later” instead…

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Kheng Swee Goh (Evan)

Section Chair – IEEE Houston Section 2016 – 2017