The new Distinguished Lecturer Program has just been officially launched during VTC, the Vehicular Technology Conference, VT Society's flagship conference, in San Francisco.
During one of the conference luncheons, Prof. Ted Rappaport, chair of the VTS Distinguished Lecturer Committee, announced the launch of the new program to an audience of nearly 400 attendees, and introduced the inaugural class of VTS Distinguished Lecturers.
With more than 40 Distinguished Lecturers covering all technical areas of interest to VTS members, the new program is among the largest of its kind within IEEE. It will allow all of VTS's 43 chapters and student branches to host seminars given by these Distinguished Lecturers.
The program will make it possible for VTS Chapters to access the pool of Distinguished Lecturers at virtually no cost: a dedicated VTS funding envelope will allow up to 2 Distinguished Lecturer visits per year for each chapter.
This new program is the fruit of several months of intense development and recruitment efforts by VTS administration, and is filling a need expressed by VTS members and chapter chairs alike: informal assessments and the traditional VTS membership survey have all shown that having access to high quality speakers is recognized as the most important reason why members want to be involved in local chapter activities. Last year, a committee was struck by the VTS Board of Governors to address this need and create a modern, wide ranging program. The committee included several society past-presidents, fellows and board members; its members ironed out the program rules, nomination guidelines, and most important of all, selected and recruited the inaugural class of Distinguished Lecturers.
With topics ranging from Smart Antennas to Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles, from Vehicular Networks to Transportation Infrastructure Management, chapters are bound to find a world-class speaker in the program that will pique interest of their local membership, and will help them grow the local VTS community.
The Distinguished Lecturer program is also a good reason to start creating a VTS chapter in your own area - only VTS chapters have access to these renowned speakers through the program, and forming a chapter only requires getting together 12 VTS members in your section!
For a detailed program guidelines and a list of our speakers and their topics, see the VTS Web Page.
For DL information or chapter development, contact Fabrice Labeau.
