IEEE Power and Energy Society Chapters: Our Bright Future with Students and Young Professionals

Dear PES Members,

We began the new 2020 with 263 PES chapters worldwide and a truly remarkable number of PES student chapters: 437. The growth of our student chapters has been astonishing, however one of our greatest challenges remains the transition of student members to young professional members after graduation. Students and young professionals are the future of our profession and our Society, so how do we help them stay engaged? The Power and Energy Society has a new 5-year strategy to provide more tangible benefits to students and young professionals, such as mentorship programs, webinars and engaging them as volunteers, in particular with our PES chapters.

Growth of PES student chapters in the last 10 years

The best way to find out what our new generations need from our Society is to simply ask them. This will be the theme of our 4^th IEEE PES Student Congress to be held in Montreal, Canada in August 2020, ahead of the 2020 IEEE PES General Meeting. The Congress gathers PES student chapter leaders from all over the world in one location to discuss hot topics of interest to our young generations and propose solutions and future direction to our Society. The selected student chapter volunteers will receive funding from PES to attend the Congress. These students will have a unique opportunity to meet members of our PES Governing Board and hopefully many of you who are planning to attend the GM in Montreal. We have an exciting opportunity for industry to support the 2020 Student Congress, please email me if this may be of interest to your company. I hope to see you in Montreal!

The key to the future of our Power and Energy Society is in all of us. For established professionals: offer mentorship and career advice to students and young professionals, recommend they attend local chapter events, provide them with opportunities to participate in conferences and help with the work of our technical committees, and involve them as volunteers in your local chapters. For those of you just starting out: reach out and get engaged with our Society, volunteer to help, seek and seize professional opportunities, and embrace challenges as your opportunities to grow. You will have the most fulfilling career ahead of you.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you wish to share your thoughts and ideas with me. I look forward to the exciting year ahead of us!

Best Wishes,
Mazana Armstrong
Vice-President Chapters
IEEE Power and Energy Society