The VOLT pilot includes a weekly hour-long live webinar session, which was recorded for those who couldn’t attend in person. One session each month included overviews by staff representatives from the IEEE Operations Center, in Piscataway, N.J., of the various organizational units, their structure, their role within IEEE, and the resources they each made available to volunteers. Other sessions dealt with IEEE’s products and services, such as the IEEE Center for Leadership Excellence, a repository for all the organization’s leadership and volunteer training materials, and SAMIEEE, an online database that breaks down membership statistics section by section. Homework was assigned every other month, with a final team project due in November. Optional “how to” demonstrations gave students an opportunity to tell the others how they had put what they learned to use.

SAMIEE, in particular, was a hit with both Idrees and Musgrove. Idrees found it “an incredible way to discover the many features of the IEEE geographic and member database, and it has helped me ever since. I have developed an efficient local database for sharing information quickly with our members.”

Both Idrees and Musgrove say they have already applied the skills they learned to their professional lives.

“My time-, people-, and activity-management skills have all improved over the past few months,” says Idrees. “And this has made me a better leader, locally and globally.”

A representative from each of the five teams will make a presentation on their final projects via WebEx remote conferencing to a forum of MGA directors during the IEEE Meeting Series, being held in November in New Brunswick, N.J. The projects dealt with identifying products and services provided by IEEE’s organizational units and finding ways to leverage them for a greater effect at the local level.

“This will be a good opportunity for the VOLT participants to be exposed to the MGA Board and a chance for the Board to see the effects of this pilot,” says Arellano.

– Did You Know…. 

that the VOLT pilot project was highlighted in this months edition of the Institute.  Two of our members were interviewed .  Check it out at the below URL.

http://theinstitute.ieee.org/career-and-education/career-guidance/training-program-aims-at-ieees-volunteers