The IEEE PES Scholarship Plus Initiative recognizes highly qualified electrical engineering undergraduate students with multi-year scholarships and assists in connecting them with relevant and meaningful career experiences. Since the program launched in 2011, 587 students received 942 scholarships have from more than 150 universities, including Ivy League colleges, flagship state universities and prestigious engineering colleges.

2016 Recipients Announced Later this Month

The PES Scholarship Plus Regional Committee members are currently reviewing more than 500 applications and an announcement of 2016 recipients is expected to be released by the middle of October.  Visit http://www.ee-scholarship.org/ for the latest news on the list of recipients.

PES Scholars at the 2016 IEEE PES General Meeting – Boston, Massachusetts

The IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting brings together many of the top power engineers in the world, sharing their knowledge and insights through papers, posters, panels and informal networking.  We were very happy that 12 PES Scholars recipients could attend, volunteer and participate in the PES General Meeting.  The students pictured above attended the PES Awards Ceremony.

New Corporate Financial Supporter

We are very pleased to announce that Southern Company has joined the list of distinguished organizations that have provided financial support to the program.  This financial support is having an impact by allowing us to distribute more scholarships.

PES Scholar Profile by Vincent Zaccone

I graduated from Drexel University in 2012 – since that time I have worked at Delmarva Power in Newark, DE.  I work as a part of the Transmission & Substation Reliability team, and we develop plans and programs to ensure the transmission lines and substations are well maintained.

PES has had a tremendous impact on my career. When I initially heard about the PES Scholarship program, I was at a critical point in college where I was a rising senior and had to declare my concentration soon; at this point I had already taken an elective in power and electronics, but didn’t know which path to go. As I wrote my 500 word essay for PES, I convinced myself that power was definitely the best path for me, as it was the easiest of concentrations to understand but also an interesting field with a lot of different job opportunities. After all, two of my three Drexel co-ops were power-related. Being a PES Scholar certainly helped guide me to my power concentration.

I enjoy that the power industry is one that is relatable to my family, friends, and really anyone I meet, since power is so universal. Instead of discussing how I am working on a component of a ballistic missile system or other complicated system that is difficult to explain, I can tell people how I work to make our power grid more reliable and how it is something that affects them. I also enjoy making trips into the field, getting hands on experience with the equipment, and working to understand why certain equipment failures occur so that appropriate corrective actions can be implemented. Since I began my role last year, that type of failure analysis work really involves communicating well with other departments and asking the right questions; it has been challenging, but very rewarding as well.

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