Section History
The mini-site attempts to provide a history perspective of the IEEE Pikes Peak Section.
IEEE Pikes Peak Section Historical Timeline, 1978–2028
1. Before 1978: the regional engineering context
The Pikes Peak Section did not emerge in a vacuum. Colorado Springs already sat within a significant electrical-engineering heritage: the Ames hydroelectric installation demonstrated practical AC power transmission in 1891, and Nikola Tesla conducted his Colorado Springs experiments in 1899–1900. The Denver AIEE Section was established in 1915, and Colorado Springs later operated as a Denver Section subsection before becoming independent. IEEE’s own 25th-anniversary history explicitly connected these developments.
This provides a useful long-view narrative:
Ames → Tesla → Denver Section → Colorado Springs Subsection → Pikes Peak Section
2. 1978: Pikes Peak Section is established
May 22, 1978
The IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Board’s predecessor formally approved the IEEE Pikes Peak Section and its boundaries on May 22, 1978. The organizing document states that the Section exists to conduct activities that help local IEEE members enhance their professional careers and their communities.
IEEE’s historical record identifies:
- Al Rosa — founding and first Section Chair
- Burt Bittner — co-founder/former Denver Subsection Chair
This is the Section’s authoritative establishment date and means:
May 22, 2028 = 50th anniversary.
3. 1978–1980: the first major archival gap
At present, I have verified Al Rosa as the first Chair, but I have not found a reliable public source giving the complete year-by-year officer roster for 1979–1980.
This is the first important finding of the current project:
The earliest organizational history survives much better as milestone/event history than as complete officer succession history.
The Section itself recognized this problem in 2022. Its Region 5 Achievements page states that, after investigating the 1978–2000 officer-history gap, material was received from John Reinert on August 21, 2022 and linked into the historical record.
That makes the Reinert-era archival material one of the most valuable sources still to be fully mined.
4. 1981: first documented technical chapter
Solid State Society Chapter
The historical record says the Section established a Solid State Society Chapter in 1981, organized by Roger Pierce and John Meredith, with Meredith as its first chair.
This is significant because only three years after Section formation, Pikes Peak had already started expanding from geographic administration into specialized technical communities.
It also introduces John Meredith very early in the Section’s history.
5. 1982: first Region 5 S-PAC hosted at UCCS
In 1982, Pikes Peak hosted the first Region 5 Student Professional Awareness Conference (S-PAC) at UCCS.
This is one of the earliest signs that Pikes Peak was not simply organizing technical talks.
S-PAC emphasized professional awareness and development, meaning that by 1982 the Section was already supporting:
technical skill + professional development.
That becomes a recurring characteristic of Pikes Peak history.
6. 1983: Computer Society Chapter established
The Computer Society Chapter was established in 1983, with Frank Hartsell as first chair.
Unlike several later chapters, Computer Society survived into the modern Section structure and remains one of the Section’s important technical organizations.
Its longevity makes it a particularly important candidate for a future chapter-survival case study.
7. 1984–1988: emergence of John Reinert
The LMAG history documents John Reinert as active on the Pikes Peak EXCOM beginning in 1984.
His documented progression was:
1986 — Secretary
1987 — Vice Chair
1988 — Section Chair
This is one of the best documented examples of an internal leadership pipeline in early Pikes Peak history.
It also foreshadows his later progression:
Pikes Peak → Region 5 → IEEE-USA.
8. 1988: Ames Hydroelectric IEEE Milestone era
The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant became an IEEE Milestone in 1988, and Pikes Peak played an important role in the dedication. Earlier research identified Reinert as Section Chair during this period.
This event is strategically important for the future history because it connects:
local Section leadership
with
preservation of engineering heritage.
It establishes a precedent for today’s interest in a possible Tesla Colorado Springs IEEE Milestone.
9. 1989–1991: another archival gap
Public web records currently provide little reliable year-by-year information on:
- Section Chairs,
- chapter officers,
- student branches,
- program activity,
- membership,
- industry relationships.
These years should remain explicitly marked:
RESEARCH OPEN — do not infer officers without primary evidence.
That is preferable to filling the timeline with uncertain names.
10. 1992: Communications Society Chapter
A Communications Society Chapter was established in 1992, with Jack McIlnay as first chair.
This is significant because communications technology was highly relevant to the Colorado Springs defense, aerospace and telecommunications environment.
The chapter later disappeared as a functioning Pikes Peak chapter despite the Section retaining Communications Society members—a useful example of the difference between membership population and volunteer organizational capacity.
11. 1993: major year of recognition and expansion
Three things stand out.
Communications/technical growth continues
The Section was supporting a growing technical-society structure.
Joint Denver–Pikes Peak Reliability Society Chapter
Established in 1993, with Gene Bagenstos identified as the founding leader.
Contemporary Denver IEEE archival material confirms Gene Bagenstos as chair of the joint Reliability organization in 1993.
Region 5 Best Small Section Award
Pikes Peak received the Region 5 Best Small Section Award in 1993.
That is strong evidence that, only 15 years after establishment, Pikes Peak had matured into a recognized Region 5 performer.
12. 1994: regional conference and EMC expansion
Region 5 Conference
The Section hosted the 1994 Region 5 Conference at the Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs.
Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Chapter
The EMC Society Chapter was established that year, with John Will as first chair.
By this point the Section had demonstrated:
technical chapter creation + regional event hosting + award recognition.
I would consider 1992–1994 the first clearly documented institutional high-growth period.
13. 1995–1997: Pikes Peak leadership reaches Region 5
John Reinert became Region 5 Director for 1996–1997.
That matters because the Section was no longer simply consuming Region services.
It was producing regional leadership.
The development pattern becomes:
Section officer → Section Chair → Region Director.
14. 1998: John Reinert becomes IEEE-USA President
John Reinert became IEEE-USA President in 1998. IEEE-USA’s official presidential history confirms him as the 1998 president.
That creates one of the strongest leadership-development examples in Section history:
Pikes Peak EXCOM → Pikes Peak Chair → Region 5 Director → IEEE-USA President.
This should receive prominent treatment in the 50th-anniversary history.
15. 1999–2000: final major gap before continuous officer records
The 1978–2000 officer record remains incomplete in the public historical page.
This is currently the most important unresolved archival block.
We should not describe this as simply “missing names.” It represents missing information about:
- succession,
- chapter vitality,
- leadership continuity,
- industry involvement,
- university participation,
- technical priorities.
Those data could help explain why some chapters survived and others later vanished.
16. 2001–2021: continuous officer record begins
From 2001 onward, IEEE ETHW provides a substantially complete officer table.
Section Chairs
| Years | Chair |
|---|---|
| 2001–2002 | Steven Lindemann |
| 2003 | Sophie Kogut |
| 2004–2005 | William Boles |
| 2006–2007 | Richard Painter |
| 2008 | Stephen Delory |
| 2009–2010 | Mark Heinrich |
| 2011–2012 | Yunqiang Vincent Yang |
| 2013–2014 | F. D. Wells |
| 2015 | David Cotton |
| 2016–2018 | Debora Elam |
| 2019–2022 / Feb. 2023 transition | John Santiago |
The ETHW table documents John Santiago through 2021; the Section’s own later records document the continuation through February 2023.
This distinction should be preserved in the final anniversary archive because ETHW stopped updating the table after 2021.
17. 2003: 25th anniversary
The Section celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2003.
Region 5 Director Jean M. Eason presented the anniversary history, explicitly connecting Pikes Peak to:
- Ames, 1891;
- Tesla in Colorado Springs, 1899–1900;
- Denver Section, 1915;
- Pikes Peak Section, 1978.
This presentation is an important historical source because it demonstrates that the Section itself previously framed its identity as part of a much longer Southern Colorado engineering heritage.
18. 2007–2019: CTU becomes an important student-development node
The current Section contact history documents IEEE CTU Student Branch advising from approximately 2007 through 2019.
A surviving CTU Student Branch site contains:
- a formal branch constitution,
- student officers,
- technical and robotics projects,
- Space Foundation participation,
- Cool Science activities,
- What-If Festival activity,
- engineering demonstrations.
This is important to the larger Section history because CTU appears to have operated as an experiential-learning and outreach laboratory well before the modern STEAM-TEAMS branding existed.
Examples included:
robotics + Tesla coils + Mecanum wheels + renewable-energy projects + public STEM demonstrations.
The exact CTU Student Branch establishment date remains an unresolved research item; public records confirm activity but not yet the original charter date.
19. 2010: GOLD Affinity Group established
The Pikes Peak GOLD Affinity Group was established in November 2010.
GOLD—Graduates of the Last Decade—was IEEE’s predecessor framework for today’s Young Professionals.
The exact relationship between the creation of GOLD and the CTU student pipeline remains unverified and should be investigated through:
- 2010 Section minutes,
- GOLD petition documentation,
- first chair records,
- CTU branch files,
- Region 5 affinity-group records.
This is an especially valuable unanswered question because, if confirmed, it could document an early attempt at:
Student → GOLD/YP → professional IEEE leadership.
20. 2016–2018: transition toward outreach and broader member development
Debora Elam served as Section Chair during 2016–2018, with John Santiago as vice chair and John Reinert serving as treasurer.
During this broader period, student/community activities included:
- What-If Festival,
- Space Foundation,
- university projects,
- STEM demonstrations,
- renewable-energy activities.
The present community-outreach archive preserves examples of this work.
21. 2018: planned Meredith–Santiago leadership transition
The Section archive documents an important planned transition:
John Santiago — incoming Section Chair / outreach focus
John Meredith — planned Vice Chair / technical-program focus
Meredith organized the September 27, 2018 cybersecurity and IEEE President’s Forum activity, but died unexpectedly on September 26.
This deserves treatment as more than an obituary.
It is a succession-history event.
Meredith represented a leadership link going back to the 1981 Solid State chapter and ultimately to his later IEEE-USA presidency. His planned mentoring role illustrates how Pikes Peak leadership was intended to transfer knowledge across generations.
22. 2019: digital revitalization begins
John Santiago became Section Chair in 2019.
The Section subsequently developed an increasingly extensive digital architecture supporting:
- technical chapters,
- LMAG,
- student activities,
- leadership development,
- community outreach,
- archived events,
- multimedia presentations,
- educational material.
The State of the Section documentation identifies dedicated webpages for Computer Society, CAS/EDS, LMAG, Magnetics and PES, together with student activities, leadership resources, digital presentations and an archive.
This is a major historical transition:
Website as announcement board → website as organizational memory and collaboration platform.
23. 2019: Life Member Affinity Group becomes a major operating unit
David Bondurant’s documented LMAG chairmanship begins in 2019.
vTools records confirm Pikes Peak LMAG activity by September 2019.
The LMAG later became one of the most active units in the Section, increasingly providing:
- technical programming,
- cross-Section cooperation,
- mentoring,
- chapter revitalization,
- institutional knowledge.
This becomes central to the Section’s later leadership architecture.
24. 2020: formal vision, mission and strategic goals appear
The Section’s current “About” page identifies a Vision, Mission and Strategic Goals framework dated July 2020, later updated in December 2022.
This is important historically.
It means the 2026 strategic offsite is not the first appearance of strategic language, but it may indeed be the first dedicated Section-wide strategic planning meeting designed to have the current EXCOM collectively work through strategy.
That distinction should be preserved.
25. 2020–2022: COVID accelerates digital and cross-Section activity
During the COVID period:
- Gene Freeman stepped into leadership of the Computer Society chapter;
- LMAG expanded virtual activity;
- the Section increasingly relied on online meetings and digital content;
- presentations became persistent multimedia resources.
The LMAG and leadership archives explicitly describe chapter revitalization and documentation during this period.
This period can reasonably be characterized as:
crisis → digital adaptation → institutional-memory expansion.
26. 2021–2022: National WWII Aviation Museum collaboration
Section records document collaboration among:
- the Section,
- Computer Society,
- LMAG,
- National Museum of WWII Aviation.
The work included grants and university-linked student simulation activities. Section award documentation credits Gene Freeman, John Reinert, David Bondurant and John Santiago with the collaborative effort.
This is significant because it demonstrates Section + Chapter + Affinity Group collaboration, rather than isolated organizational silos.
27. 2022: major recognition and formal historical reconstruction
David Bondurant receives MGA Achievement Award
The Section documents the 2022 MGA Achievement Award for David Bondurant for leadership and contributions to Section, Council and Region activities.
The award narrative specifically emphasizes:
- revitalizing LMAG and Computer Society activity,
- documented multimedia events,
- providing resources future volunteer leaders could reuse.
That is directly relevant to the continuity architecture now being discussed.
September 9, 2022 Region 5 Achievements Forum
The Pikes Peak history and accomplishments were formally presented, and the Section explicitly investigated the 1978–2000 historical officer gap.
This should be regarded as an earlier phase of the current historical project.
28. 2022: student-branch ecosystem documented
By this period, the Section explicitly identified IEEE student branches associated with:
- UCCS
- Colorado Technical University
- United States Air Force Academy
- Colorado State University–Pueblo
The exact establishment dates of UCCS, USAFA and CSU-Pueblo branches remain open research items.
That is another priority for the definitive archive.
29. February 2023: leadership transition
The documented 2023 leadership became:
David Bondurant — Chair
Gene Freeman — Vice Chair
Stephen Nadraus — Secretary
John Reinert — Treasurer
John Santiago — Past Chair/Webmaster
This transition is particularly important because several senior leaders were Life Members.
That circumstance later sharpened the Section’s concern about Young Professional succession.
30. 2023: Pikes Peak LMAG receives global recognition
Section minutes document that the Pikes Peak LMAG received the 2023 Global LMAG Achievement Award, with Section leadership associating the recognition with its collaborative student simulation-lab work.
This is one of the strongest external validations of the modern Pikes Peak organizational model.
It should be included prominently in the 50th-anniversary history.
31. 2023: Gene Freeman receives Region 5 recognition
The Section’s awards page records Gene Freeman receiving the Jim Leonard Award for Outstanding Member in 2023.
His trajectory is useful for the broader leadership story because he combined technical-chapter leadership with Section leadership and mentoring.
32. 2023–2024: Future City participation expands community STEM role
Section minutes document Pikes Peak participation in Future City Colorado, including mentors, judges and financial support. Fourteen Section members participated in judging the 2023 competition cycle, and Pikes Peak supported the regional competition culminating at Colorado School of Mines in January 2024.
This moves the Section further from occasional STEM outreach toward sustained community partnership.
33. 2024: succession and member engagement become explicit issues
The January 2024 State of the Section meeting reviewed:
- Section history,
- past IEEE-USA presidents from Pikes Peak,
- Section finances,
- chapter status,
- student activity.
The minutes also show growing attention to elections, membership development and student-branch plans.
The Section began formalizing online elections and recruiting new leadership.
This is an important shift:
succession becomes an explicit operating requirement.
34. 2024: distributed leadership begins appearing in the website structure
By 2024–2025 the Section leadership pages identify not just Section officers, but:
- membership-development leadership,
- Student Activities leadership,
- Young Professional leadership,
- mini-site webmaster roles,
- student-branch advisors,
- technical chapter chairs.
This matters historically because it reflects the movement from a centralized website model toward a distributed strategic information platform.
35. 2024: AI Education Week becomes a multi-Section experiment
The Pikes Peak Section’s 2024 IEEE Education Week activities developed a substantial AI-focused program including privacy, EDA, supply chain, tools, STEM and productivity topics.
This represents another evolution:
local technical activity → digital regional collaboration.
36. 2025: STEAM-TEAMS begins as a formal pilot
The Section’s documentation identifies February 11, 2025 as the first monthly STEAM-TEAMS meeting and describes the initiative as a multi-year pilot intended to develop a mentor pipeline for middle-school STEM education.
The TryEngineering proposal explicitly states that the sustainability problem includes the fact that many key Pikes Peak leadership roles are held by LMAG members and that a mentorship/continuity program is required.
This directly links:
STEM outreach
to
leadership succession.
37. 2025: IEEE–Cool Science collaboration
The Section records an important collaboration sequence:
- February 11 STEAM-TEAMS meeting,
- Mark Heinrich connection with Cool Science,
- March 10 meeting with Executive Director Marc Straub,
- participation in the Colorado Springs Cool Science Festival.
The 2025 Carnival Day attracted approximately 8,000 visitors across more than 100 booths, with Pikes Peak operating its own STEM presence.
This became one of the Section’s largest community-facing opportunities.
38. 2025: TryEngineering STEM Grant
The Section received a 2025 IEEE TryEngineering STEM Grant supporting the STEAM-TEAMS approach.
The grant report documents:
- monthly sessions,
- hands-on demonstrations,
- community partnerships,
- mentorship,
- AI-assisted multimedia,
- Cool Science,
- outreach to families and students.
The later Region 5 proposal quantifies several outcomes, including:
- 200+ attendees at a FACSC activity,
- 178+ at another community event,
- roughly 8,000 Cool Science visitors,
- 37 follow-up family sign-ups,
- 65 unique virtual STEM Summit booth visitors / 33 contacts.
39. 2025: John Reinert receives John Meredith Lifetime Achievement Award
In May 2025, John Reinert was honored as recipient of the John Meredith Region 5 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Historically, that is especially meaningful.
It links two of the Section’s most important leadership figures:
Meredith — early chapter leader / IEEE-USA President
and
Reinert — Section Chair / Region 5 Director / IEEE-USA President.
This should be highlighted as a symbolic continuity point in the anniversary history.
40. 2025: LMAG-to-student mentoring becomes explicit
The November 19, 2025 CSU-Pueblo activity brought Pikes Peak LMAG and Section leaders together with students for a structured group-mentoring event.
This is important because the historical leadership cycle is becoming visible as an intentional system:
Life Members → students/YPs → future leadership.
41. 2026: STEAM-TEAMS begins moving toward scalable infrastructure
The current Section website describes an AI-assisted STEM ecosystem combining:
- Life Members,
- Young Professionals,
- students,
- educators,
- parents,
- industry,
- hands-on circuit activities,
- multimedia,
- mentorship pathways.
The current framing is:
Curiosity → Competence → Leadership → Service.
This represents the clearest articulation yet of the Section’s transition from individual events toward leadership-development infrastructure.
42. 2026: Region 5 scaling becomes explicit
The 2026 Region 5 MGA proposal presents STEAM-TEAMS as a scalable model and summarizes 2025 outcomes.
The newer Leadership Multiplier architecture extends the idea further toward cross-Section learning, mentorship, ethical leadership and replication.
The Section is therefore moving from:
local execution
toward
documented model → shared model → potential Region replication.
43. 2026: succession remains unfinished
The current homepage is actively recruiting candidates for the 2026 Section and chapter elections and emphasizes:
“A leader builds other leaders.”
It lists Section officer positions and technical-chapter leadership roles needing candidates.
This is an important historical point.
The succession challenge identified by studying dormant chapters has not disappeared.
The architecture is being built precisely because the problem remains active.
44. 2026: first dedicated strategic offsite
The September 2026 strategic process should be recorded as a historical milestone in its own right:
First dedicated Pikes Peak Section strategic offsite / collective strategy-development process.
This is different from the 2020 Vision/Mission/Strategic Goals documentation.
The key difference is governance:
previous strategic framework → documented leadership vision
versus
2026 offsite → EXCOM collectively develops strategy.
That distinction may become important when the 2028 history is written.
45. 2028: the 50th anniversary horizon
The anniversary occurs:
May 22, 2028
I would recommend the history project culminate in five permanent outputs:
1. Definitive digital timeline
1978–2028.
2. Complete leadership registry
Every Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer.
3. Organizational genealogy
Every chapter, affinity group and student branch:
formation → activity → dormancy → reactivation/dissolution.
4. Oral-history archive
Especially Reinert-era and surviving leaders from the 1980s–1990s.
5. “Lessons from 50 Years” report
Not merely what happened, but what the Section learned about:
leadership, succession, technical vitality, student pipelines, mentorship and institutional memory.
The Section-chair record: what is known and what is missing
The current state can be summarized very clearly.
Verified
1978 — Al Rosa
1988 — John Reinert
2001 onward — essentially continuous
Not yet verified year by year
1979–1987 except Reinert’s 1986–88 progression
1989–2000
That is now the highest-value archival gap.
The chapter genealogy we should preserve
The verified chapter history currently includes at minimum:
1981 — Solid State
1983 — Computer Society
1992 — Communications Society
1993 — Denver/Pikes Peak Reliability
1994 — EMC
later — CAS/EDS
later — Magnetics
later — Power & Energy
plus historical evidence of Engineering Management/Technology Management.
Some survived, some became dormant, some disappeared, and at least one—Solid-State Circuits—appears to have later returned.
That means the definitive timeline should not merely record:
“Chapter formed.”
It should record:
formed → leadership lineage → active period → dormancy → dissolution/reactivation.
That may be the most valuable institutional-learning layer of the entire history.
The student-branch genealogy needs similar treatment
Currently documented within the Section ecosystem:
Colorado Technical University
UCCS
United States Air Force Academy
Colorado State University–Pueblo
But the charter dates and periods of dormancy/reactivation are still incomplete.
For CTU, we have unusually strong surviving activity documentation but still need the original branch-establishment record.
The leadership lineage is becoming one of the strongest themes
The emerging historical line is:
Al Rosa / Burt Bittner
Section creation
↓
Meredith / Pierce / Hartsell / McIlnay / Bagenstos / Will
technical organization creation
↓
Reinert / Meredith
local leadership → national IEEE leadership
↓
later Section chairs and chapter leaders
↓
LMAG + Computer Society revitalization
↓
student / YP / mentorship infrastructure
↓
STEAM-TEAMS / Leadership Multiplier
This supports a historical thesis that I think is now defensible:
The Pikes Peak Section’s strongest recurring capability has been creating technical and leadership capacity. Its recurring vulnerability has been sustaining that capacity across leadership transitions.
That is a far richer interpretation than a traditional anniversary chronology.
The research priorities I would pursue next
The remaining work should now become very focused rather than broad.
- Recover every Chair from 1978–2000.
John Reinert’s archival material, old Region 5 newsletters and Section records are the priority. - Recover every chapter charter and termination/reactivation date.
This allows a true chapter-survival analysis. - Recover Student Branch establishment dates.
CTU, UCCS, USAFA, CSU-Pueblo. - Recover GOLD’s founding records.
Especially determine whether the 2010 GOLD Affinity Group originated through CTU. - Interview John Reinert while the early institutional memory is directly accessible.
Particularly 1984–2000. - Capture oral histories from other surviving former chairs and chapter founders.
- Build one common database rather than another narrative-only page.
The database fields should include:
Date | Organizational Unit | Event | Leader(s) | Predecessor | Successor | Source | Confidence | Strategic significance
That would let the same data generate:
- the website timeline,
- 50th-anniversary booklet,
- chapter genealogy,
- leadership genealogy,
- strategic lessons,
- presentation graphics.
Most important immediate conclusion
This research already gives the September strategic process something very useful:
Pikes Peak does not need to invent its future without reference to its past.
Its own history has already demonstrated:
creation, innovation, technical leadership, regional influence, national leadership, outreach and mentoring.
The strategic challenge is to convert those episodic successes into a system that survives the people who created them.
That is exactly why the evolving website architecture, mini-sites, distributed editing, LMAG stories, YP pathways, student outreach and mentorship structure matter. They are not separate projects. They can become the institutional-memory and leadership-continuity layer that the historical record shows was repeatedly missing.
If we continue this work, I would next tackle the 1978–2000 officer and chapter reconstruction specifically, rather than broaden the timeline further. That is where the greatest remaining historical value lies.
Here is the link to the original website:
vTools WebInABox | vTools IEEE (https://site.ieee.org/pikespeak)https://webinabox.vtools.ieee.org/wibp_home/index/R50043)
Here is another website used training for traning purposes to manage the exisitnig website you are visiting now:
The IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki explicitly documents the first five early chapter formations: Solid State in 1981, Computer in 1983, Communications in 1992, joint Denver–Pikes Peak Reliability in 1993, and EMC in 1994. It also records establishment of the GOLD Affinity Group in November 2010.
1. Solid State: 1981 → disappearance → revival
This is probably the most interesting case.
IEEE’s historical record states:
Solid State Society Chapter established in 1981 by Roger Pierce and John Meredith, with Meredith serving as first chair.
This was one of the first organizational units created after the Section itself was formed in 1978.
However, by February 2023, the Pikes Peak Section specifically reported 47 Solid-State Circuits Society members but “no chapter within the Section.” The Section was considering whether inactive historical chapters should be reactivated.
That’s strong evidence that the original chapter had ceased functioning as a recognized local chapter at some point.
But there has now been another change.
The current IEEE vTools organizational directory lists:
Pikes Peak Section Chapter, SSC37
alongside the Computer, Magnetics, CAS/ED and PES chapters.
And a 2026 event explicitly identifies the Pikes Peak Solid State Circuits Chapter as one of its hosts.
So the life cycle appears to be:
1981 Solid State Chapter
→ active historical chapter
→ eventually inactive/dissolved
→ no chapter by February 2023
→ renewed organizational activity
→ recognized SSC37 chapter again by 2026
That is an excellent example of revitalization rather than permanent organizational death.
2. Computer Society: 1983 → survives
The Computer Society Chapter was established in 1983 by Frank Hartsell, its first chair.
Unlike several of its contemporaries, it survived.
Its current organizational identifier is:
CH05056 — Pikes Peak Section Chapter, C16
and it remains in IEEE’s current directory.
It was particularly active during the 2019–2022 revitalization period, conducting meetings on subjects such as quantum computing, AI, cybersecurity and space technology.
Therefore:
1983 → 2026 = approximately 43 years of organizational continuity, although activity levels undoubtedly varied.
That may make Computer Society the Section’s longest continuously surviving technical chapter.
3. Communications Society: 1992 → disappeared
IEEE history gives a very specific foundation:
1992 — Communications Society Chapter established by Jack McIlnay, first chair.
A historical Region 5 chapter roster from approximately 2010 still lists:
Communications Society — Pikes Peak Section.
But by 2023, the Section stated that there were 48 Communications Society members but no Communications chapter within Pikes Peak.
And Communications does not appear in today’s official Pikes Peak vTools organization list.
Therefore this is one of the clearest examples:
Communications Society
Created: 1992
Still documented: circa 2010
Gone by: February 2023
Current: no Pikes Peak COMSOC chapter
The exact dissolution year remains to be determined.
4. Reliability Society: 1993 → disappeared
IEEE’s history records:
1993 — Joint Denver–Pikes Peak Reliability Society Chapter established by Gene Bagenstos.
It does not appear in the contemporary Pikes Peak organizational directory.
It also disappeared from the Section’s own 2019–2023 lists of active chapter organizations.
This therefore represents another historical chapter that was created but subsequently ceased to be part of the Section’s operating organizational structure.
Whether it was formally dissolved or reorganized under Denver requires the original IEEE Geographic Unit records.
5. Electromagnetic Compatibility: 1994 → disappeared
Another particularly clear historical case:
1994 — EMC Society Chapter established by John Will, first chair.
Yet EMC is absent from:
- the 2019–2022 active chapter list;
- the 2023 Section inventory;
- the current vTools Pikes Peak organizational hierarchy.
Therefore:
Created: 1994
→ operated historically
→ subsequently became inactive/dissolved
→ not current
Again, the missing variable is the exact termination year.
6. Engineering Management Society: another overlooked historical chapter
This was the most interesting discovery not contained in the Pikes Peak ETHW chronology.
A historical IEEE Region 5 chapter directory lists an:
Engineering Management Society — Pikes Peak Section.
IEEE records also contain organizational identifier:
CH05175 — Pikes Peak Section Chapter, TM14.
This appears to reflect the lineage of the old Engineering Management Society/Technology Management organizational structure, which underwent changes at the IEEE Society level.
It is absent from today’s Pikes Peak vTools hierarchy.
So this adds at least one additional historical chapter beyond the four early units described on the ETHW Pikes Peak history page.
I would classify its historical status as:
Documented historical unit — no longer operating as a current Pikes Peak chapter.
7. CAS/EDS Joint Chapter: survives
The historical Region 5 directory already listed Pikes Peak’s:
Circuits and Systems Society / Electron Devices Society joint chapter around 2010.
Its formal organizational identifier remains:
CH05055 — Pikes Peak Section Joint Chapter, CAS04/ED15.
It remains in the current IEEE vTools directory.
Activity, however, has fluctuated significantly.
Section minutes report that it underwent approximately a four-year activity pause before being reactivated through meetings at UCCS.
That is important because:
Dormant ≠ dissolved.
CAS/EDS demonstrates how a chapter can remain an IEEE organizational unit even though it reports little or no activity for several years.
8. Magnetics Society: survives
Current IEEE records identify:
CH05210 — Pikes Peak Section Chapter, MAG33.
It had substantial technical activity during 2019–2022, including work on spintronics, magnetic heterostructures, magnonics and magnetic materials.
It remains in the current organizational directory.
Recent Section reports, however, have described the chapter as having relatively limited activity compared with Computer Society and LMAG.
So Magnetics belongs in the category:
Current organizational unit — activity varies.
9. Power & Energy Society: survives
PES also remains a formally recognized Pikes Peak unit:
CH05183 — Pikes Peak Section Chapter, PE31.
It appears in both current IEEE PES records and the Pikes Peak organizational hierarchy.
Again, activity levels have varied.
10. GOLD Affinity Group: 2010 → apparently dormant, not necessarily dissolved
The Section established its:
GOLD Affinity Group in November 2010.
GOLD stood for Graduates of the Last Decade, the predecessor to what IEEE now calls Young Professionals.
Interestingly, the current Pikes Peak vTools hierarchy still contains:
PPS GOLD Affinity Group.
But recent Section minutes repeatedly discuss the possibility of forming a Young Professionals Affinity Group, based on the Section having roughly 84–104 YP members.
That suggests the GOLD organizational record remains in IEEE systems, but it is not functioning as an active contemporary YP Affinity Group.
I would therefore not count GOLD as definitively dissolved.
It is better classified:
Historically created; organizational record survives; operationally dormant/legacy status.
That distinction may become important if Pikes Peak creates its new YP Affinity Group.
11. Life Member Affinity Group: active and exceptionally successful
The Life Member Affinity Group is clearly current.
Its organizational identifier is:
LM50043 — Pikes Peak Section Affinity Group, LM.
By 2019 it was actively reporting meetings, and David Bondurant has served as LMAG chair beginning in 2019.
LMAG subsequently became one of the Section’s strongest organizational units.
So LMAG belongs entirely in the survival column.
The Numerical Answer
Using the available evidence, I would currently characterize the historical record this way:
| Measure | Best-supported count |
|---|---|
| Distinct technical chapter lines documented historically | ≥9 |
| Affinity-group lines documented historically | 2 |
| Total chapter/affinity organizational lines | ≥11 |
| Technical organizations unquestionably current | 5 |
| Current/recognized affinity organizations in IEEE directory | 2 |
| Historical technical chapters no longer appearing as current Pikes Peak units | 4 |
| Historical chapter that disappeared but has since returned — Solid-State Circuits | 1 |
| Affinity group apparently dormant/legacy — GOLD | 1 |
Therefore, depending on definition:
Strictly no longer current:
4 technical chapter organizations
- Communications
- Reliability
- Electromagnetic Compatibility
- Engineering Management/Technology Management
If we count historically lost and subsequently revived units:
5 technical chapters experienced disappearance/inactivity serious enough to eliminate their local chapter presence, adding:
- Solid State / Solid-State Circuits
A Very Important Finding
This changes how I would interpret Pikes Peak Section history.
Its problem has not historically been an inability to create chapters.
Quite the opposite.
During its first few decades Pikes Peak demonstrated impressive organizational entrepreneurship:
1981 — Solid State
↓
1983 — Computer
↓
1992 — Communications
↓
1993 — Reliability
↓
1994 — EMC
↓
plus Engineering Management, CAS/EDS, Magnetics and PES.
The deeper historical challenge appears to have been:
Leadership succession and sustaining volunteer organizations after the founding champion leaves.
That is an extremely important distinction.
Creation Is Easier Than Succession
The pattern resembles a classic volunteer-organization failure mode:
Champion appears
→ Chapter created
→ Champion recruits colleagues
→ Technical programs flourish
→ Champion changes job/retires/moves
→ Membership remains
→ Leadership pipeline weakens
→ Meetings decrease
→ Reporting requirements aren’t met
→ Chapter becomes dormant
→ Eventually disappears administratively.
The 2023 Pikes Peak data provide striking evidence.
Even after the Communications chapter disappeared, 48 Communications Society members still lived in the Section. Likewise, there were 47 Solid-State Circuits members without a chapter.
In other words:
The people didn’t disappear. The volunteer leadership infrastructure did.
That is a much more consequential historical lesson.
This Strongly Supports the Mentorship Flywheel
The history actually provides empirical justification for the contemporary:
Recruit → Mentor → Activate → Replicate
approach.
The historical chapter model often appears to have been:
Recruit leader → Create chapter → Run programs
The missing fourth step was often:
Develop the leader’s replacement.
A more resilient model becomes:
Founder
→ recruits successor
→ mentors successor
→ successor becomes chair
→ successor recruits next leader
→ institutional continuity.
Or using the leadership equation:
Skillset × Mindset × Mentorship = Leadership Capacity
The historical evidence suggests that Pikes Peak had plenty of technical skillset.
The organizational constraint was often the third multiplier:
Mentorship and succession.
That may be one of the strongest historical arguments yet for treating mentorship as infrastructure rather than simply an IEEE member benefit.
One Particularly Useful Metric for 2028
For the 50th anniversary historical project, I recommend we construct a new metric:
Chapter Survival Rate
For every Pikes Peak chapter:
Year formed → Founding chair → subsequent chairs → active years → dormant periods → dissolution → reactivation
That would let us calculate something rarely examined in IEEE Section histories:
How long does a volunteer organization survive after its founding leader leaves?
Then compare chapters that survived—particularly Computer Society—with those that disappeared.
That could reveal the factors associated with sustainability:
Leadership succession + mentoring + officer depth + university connection + industrial base + recurring programming + cross-chapter cooperation.
That research could go well beyond documenting Pikes Peak history. It could potentially become a Region 5 section/chapter vitality case study.
Principal sources
IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Pikes Peak Section History
Current IEEE vTools Pikes Peak organizational directory
IEEE Pikes Peak State of the Section
Pikes Peak has repeatedly demonstrated that it can create organizations. The harder problem has been transferring knowledge, relationships, motivation, and leadership before the current leaders leave.
The three mini webistes described below sites attack different parts of that problem.
1. The three mini-sites form a lifecycle, not three independent websites
I would now represent their relationship this way:
LMAG Stories → LMAG → Young Professionals → Section/Chapter Leadership → Future LMAG
Or more functionally:
Legacy → Mentorship → Activation → Leadership → Legacy
That is essentially an institutional version of:
Recruit → Mentor → Activate → Replicate
The Section’s own mentorship page reinforces this interpretation. It explicitly connects the LMAG stories mini-site, the Young Professional mini-site, and student activities as resources for people at different career stages, and describes mentoring as a multiplying or cascading process.
That is why I think the three sites deserve to be understood as a system.
2. “Stories of LMAG Members” preserves something more valuable than résumés
The strongest evidence is on the Contributions & Stories of LMAG Members page.
The page explicitly states that its purpose is to provide inspiration and lessons learned to Young Professionals and IEEE student members by exposing them to the engineering careers of experienced Life Members. It also states the governing philosophy:
“A Leader Builds Other Leaders.”
The page includes John Meredith, Donald Kraft, John Reinert, Russell Bogardus, David Bondurant, Gene Freeman, and John Santiago, among others.
That changes the purpose of the page.
It is not primarily:
LMAG recognition.
It is:
LMAG knowledge transfer.
That distinction is critical.
An ordinary organizational website says:
“Here are our distinguished members.”
This mini-site effectively asks:
“What can the next generation learn from the decisions, careers, mistakes, service, technical work, and leadership journeys of these engineers?”
That is fundamentally a mentorship function.
3. John Meredith becomes the historical bridge
The John Meredith material is particularly revealing.
The site documents the intended 2018 leadership arrangement in which Meredith would serve as vice chair and mentor while the incoming Section chair concentrated on community and STEM outreach and Meredith concentrated on technical programming. Meredith died unexpectedly immediately before a September 2018 technical program he had organized.
Viewed from the history we just reconstructed, that event acquires additional significance.
Meredith represented institutional memory stretching almost back to the Section’s founding era:
1981 — first chair of the Solid State chapter
↓
decades of IEEE service
↓
2007 — IEEE-USA President
↓
2018 — planned mentor to the next Section leadership generation
That is almost a perfect illustration of knowledge flowing:
Chapter → Section → Region/National IEEE → back to Section → next generation.
His death also illustrates the organizational risk inherent in relying upon knowledge residing primarily in people.
Hence the mini-site serves another function:
converting tacit knowledge into persistent organizational knowledge.
That is precisely what a continuity system should do.
4. “Stories of LMAG Members” is effectively a digital continuity folder
There is an especially important statement on the page comparing leadership legacy to a continuity folder—something that allows the next person to build upon lessons learned rather than starting over.
That is probably the best way to understand the site.
Traditional continuity:
Officer → binder → replacement officer
The mini-site transforms that into:
Experienced engineer → stories + career examples + lessons learned → anyone in the Section → future leaders
That is a considerable improvement because the information is no longer trapped in an officer-to-officer handoff.
It becomes:
persistent + searchable + asynchronous + scalable.
For a volunteer organization, that is very important.
5. The LMAG mini-site turns retired expertise into productive capacity
The dedicated LMAG webpage serves a somewhat different function.
During the Section’s digital revitalization, dedicated webpages were established for Computer Society, CAS/EDS, LMAG, Magnetics, and PES, with recorded presentations, flipbooks, videos, and other reusable technical material.
The LMAG page therefore does not merely say:
“We have a Life Member Affinity Group.”
It creates an operating platform through which experienced engineers can contribute:
technical talks
professional-development material
historical knowledge
mentoring
student engagement
cross-Section collaboration
The historical event record shows significant LMAG activity beginning at least by 2019, including Pikes Peak meetings and joint events with Denver and numerous other Region 5 LMAGs.
So the LMAG mini-site performs an important transformation:
retirement does not equal departure from IEEE’s productive system.
Life Members can become the mentor layer of the organization.
6. This directly addresses the chapter-collapse problem
This is where our previous research becomes especially useful.
Recall the historical pattern:
Chapter created
→ founder/champion drives activity
→ successor pipeline weakens
→ activity drops
→ chapter becomes dormant
→ chapter disappears.
The Section had enough Communications Society members in 2023 to potentially support a chapter, yet the chapter itself had disappeared. Other technical groups experienced similar declines.
This means membership count alone is insufficient.
A healthy IEEE organizational unit needs:
members + leaders + mentors + institutional memory + opportunities to practice leadership.
The LMAG ecosystem supplies three of those five immediately:
Mentors
Institutional memory
Leadership experience
That is why the LMAG mini-site is strategically related to chapter vitality even though it may appear superficially to be about older members.
7. The Young Professional mini-site addresses the other side of the succession equation
The Young Professional page is designed around onboarding, opportunities and activation.
It welcomes new members, provides IEEE and Section context, displays calendars and upcoming events, and includes specific sections for:
About IEEE
Calendar
Onboarding
Opportunities
TryEngineering
Marketing
KEEN
Why Join IEEE?
That structure is very revealing.
It isn’t simply a YP social page.
It attempts to answer a sequence of questions that a younger member naturally has:
1. Where am I?
About IEEE
2. What’s happening?
Calendar
3. How do I get started?
Onboarding
4. What can I actually do?
Opportunities
5. How can I serve?
TryEngineering / STEM
6. How can I grow professionally?
KEEN / professional development
7. Why should I remain involved?
Why IEEE?
That is essentially a member activation funnel.
8. The key design choice: give YPs something to lead
The Young Professional site explicitly encourages younger members to become involved in STEM activities and notes that they can organize their own events, with examples already available and possible Section resources available through a short proposal.
That is an extremely important leadership-development mechanism.
Instead of saying:
“Come to our monthly meeting.”
the model becomes:
“Here is a small mission. Take responsibility for it. We will provide mentors, resources and organizational backing.”
That turns passive membership into leadership practice.
A progression can therefore become:
Attend
→ Volunteer
→ Own a task
→ Lead a small event
→ Lead a team
→ Chair a committee
→ Chair a chapter
→ Section officer
→ Region leadership
That is much closer to how leadership actually develops.
9. This explains why STEM outreach is strategically important
STEM outreach could easily be misunderstood as simply community service.
Within this architecture, it has another function.
It is a low-risk leadership laboratory.
A Young Professional can lead:
a Snap Circuits station;
a PhET demonstration;
a school visit;
a STEM booth;
a small volunteer team;
a one-hour workshop.
Those assignments are much less intimidating than asking:
“Would you like to become Chapter Chair?”
But they exercise many of the same capabilities:
planning + communication + teamwork + budgeting + logistics + teaching + stakeholder engagement + accountability.
Thus STEM outreach becomes a bridge between:
IEEE membership
and
IEEE leadership.
That is potentially one of the most strategically important aspects of the mini-site architecture.
10. The LMAG Stories site supplies the “Why”
I would assign the three sites slightly different jobs.
Stories of LMAG Members
WHY should I lead?
Shows what a meaningful engineering life can look like.
LMAG
WHO can help me?
Provides experienced engineers, mentors, technical knowledge and institutional memory.
Young Professionals
WHAT can I do next?
Provides onboarding, opportunities and increasingly consequential responsibilities.
This creates:
WHY → WHO → WHAT → DO
And ultimately:
DO → LEAD → MENTOR
That last transition closes the loop.
11. There is also a deliberate age-bridge
The Section itself recognized the demographic problem.
Meeting records report that Pikes Peak had approximately 84 Young Professional members and enough members potentially to establish a YP affinity group, while LMAG, Computer Society and the Section itself accounted for much of the visible organizational activity.
That creates an organizational gap:
Experienced LMAG leaders
⬇
?
⬇
YP and student members
The mini-sites essentially build the bridge across that gap.
I would illustrate it as:
LMAG
Experience
↓
Stories
↓
Mentorship
↓
Young Professionals
Opportunity
↓
Practice
↓
Responsibility
↓
Section/Chapter Leadership
That is far more useful than treating LMAG and YP as unrelated affinity groups.
12. The system also solves the “bus factor”
There is a systems-engineering concept often called the bus factor:
How many critical people could an organization lose before essential knowledge disappears?
Volunteer organizations frequently have dangerously low bus factors.
A chapter may effectively have:
Bus Factor = 1
because only one person knows:
how the meetings are organized,
who the speakers are,
where the contacts reside,
how vTools works,
where funding comes from,
how Region officers are contacted,
which universities cooperate,
what worked previously.
When that individual leaves, activity collapses.
The mini-sites increase organizational resilience by externalizing knowledge.
That creates:
Personal Memory → Institutional Memory
which increases:
Leadership Resilience
13. And the Section’s website becomes more than a communications vehicle
The State of the Section material explicitly describes the website as supporting technical resources, professional development, chapter pages, digital presentations, educational resources and historical material.
In systems terms, I would now describe the website as the Section’s:
organizational memory layer
vTools records events.
The website preserves:
context + narrative + lessons + people + resources + pathways.
Those are different functions.
IEEE databases can tell you:
A meeting occurred on October 24.
The mini-site can explain:
Why that meeting mattered, who made it possible, what younger members can learn from it, and how someone can continue the work.
That difference is enormous.
14. Now the historical chapter data makes the architecture even stronger
Before researching the chapter lifecycle, the mini-sites could reasonably be interpreted as innovative member-engagement resources.
After researching the chapter lifecycle, I would characterize them more strongly:
They are an early attempt at solving a documented 48-year organizational sustainability problem.
Historical problem:
Strong founder → successful chapter → weak succession → dormancy
The emerging solution:
Experienced leader
↓
Capture experience
↓
Expose YPs to models
↓
Provide mentors
↓
Give small leadership opportunities
↓
Increase responsibility
↓
Develop replacement leaders
↓
Repeat
That is the Mentorship Flywheel almost exactly.
15. It also changes the meaning of “A Leader Builds Other Leaders”
That phrase can sound philosophical by itself.
But in this historical context it becomes an organizational design requirement.
A chapter chair who produces twelve excellent meetings but leaves without preparing another chair has achieved:
program success
but potentially failed at:
organizational sustainability.
Conversely, a leader who develops two capable successors may have created greater long-term value even with fewer events.
I would therefore suggest a stronger metric:
Leadership Replication Rate
For each leader:
How many additional people became capable of leading because this person served?
That could become a more meaningful measure than:
number of meetings held.
16. It even explains Reinert and Meredith differently
Our historical research showed:
John Reinert:
Pikes Peak → Region 5 Director → IEEE-USA President
John Meredith:
Chapter formation → broader IEEE leadership → IEEE-USA President
Those trajectories demonstrate upward mobility.
But the mini-sites add another dimension:
leadership must also flow back downward.
In other words:
Student → YP → Section → Region → National
is only half the system.
The complete model is:
Student → YP → Section → Region → National
↑ ↓
Mentorship ← Experience ← Life Member
That creates a closed loop.
17. The complete Pikes Peak leadership architecture
I would now model the Section’s emerging system as five layers:
Layer Primary mechanism Function
Student Student Branch / STEM Exposure and experimentation
Young Professional YP mini-site Activation and leadership practice
Section/Chapter Committees and officers Organizational leadership
Region/National IEEE service Expanded leadership responsibility
Life Member LMAG + Stories Mentorship, memory and replication
Then Life Members feed knowledge back into the first four layers.
That is not a pipeline.
It is a closed-loop leadership system.
18. This is arguably the deeper purpose of the mini-sites
I would therefore describe the three sites collectively as:
The Pikes Peak Section’s digital leadership continuity system—preserving institutional knowledge from experienced IEEE members, connecting that knowledge with younger engineers, and giving emerging leaders progressively larger opportunities to serve, lead and eventually mentor the next generation.
That statement is strongly supported by the language and structure actually present on the sites.
And now there is a compelling historical reason for it:
because Pikes Peak’s own history demonstrates what happens when organizational capability is created faster than leadership succession capability.
One refinement I would now make
I would explicitly connect all three mini-sites with a small visual on each page:
STUDENT → YOUNG PROFESSIONAL → LEADER → LIFE MEMBER
↑________________________________________↓
** MENTORSHIP**
and underneath:
A Leader Builds Other Leaders
Then:
Recruit → Mentor → Activate → Replicate
That would make the architecture visible instead of requiring someone to infer it from three separate pages.
There is an even bigger implication: these mini-sites may be viewed as an early prototype of what could become a Pikes Peak/Region 5 Leadership Knowledge System—not merely web content. That would connect the historical chapter survival research, LMAG institutional memory, YP activation, STEAM-TEAMS, and future Section succession planning into one measurable system.p>