ProCon is back for 2025!  We will be at the Kirkwood Hotel on Tuesday, April 1st, 2025. We have some great speakers lined up for this year’s event.  View the flyer with more details here  and register for the event here!

At the 2025 Region 4/Region 6 meeting on Saturday, January 25th in San Francisco, the Cedar Rapids Section WIE (Women in Engineering) affinity group was awarded the 2024 Region 4’s Outstanding Affinity Group Award!  The citation reads, “In recognition of social, professional, and technical events to further the professional development of their members”.  Congratulations to all of the Region 4 Award winners!

On Saturday, January 18th, the IEEE Cedar Rapids Section judged for the IEEE Special Award “Most Innovative Power Distribution/Communication System” at the Future City Contest.  The contest was organized by NewBoCo and held at the Kirkwood Regional Center in Hiawatha.  See https://newbo.co/education/k-12/future-city/ for more information.

On November 4th, the Cedar Rapids Section held a dinner to celebrate our section’s 80th Anniversary!  Meredith Godar was presented with the Ted Hunter award.  The Cedar Rapids Section Ted Hunter Award is given in recognition of outstanding service in furthering the purpose and objectives of the Section.  Vickie Ozburn was presented with Myron “Mike” Wilson’s past director pin.  Vickie is the current director of IEEE Region 4 and will become the past director in the new year.  Mike Wilson was a member of the Cedar Rapids section, former director of IEEE Region 4, and an IEEE Fellow.  Mike passed away in September at the age of 99.  His obituary is here.  At Mike’s memorial service, lapel pins from his years of volunteer service were given away in his memory.

On April 10th – 11th, 2024, Leon Tabak of the Cedar Rapids Section, attended the IEEE-USA Congressional Visit Day.  IEEE Congressional Visit Day is an annual event that brings engineers, scientists, mathematicians, researchers, educators, and technology executives to Washington to raise visibility of and support for engineering and technology.

You can find out more about the IEEE-USA Congressional Visit Day here. And read more about Leon’s experience here

On September 12th, our past chair, Chad Mittelstadt, presented at the kickoff meeting of the 2024-2025 University of Iowa IEEE Student Branch.  Congrats to the new student officers!

The CVARC Hamfest was held this past weekend, on August 3rd, 2024 at the Linn County Fairgrounds. Around 100 people attended, many of whom are IEEE members.  The Cedar Rapids IEEE was represented with a booth at the vendor fair.

The Central States VHF Society Conference was held July 25th – 28th 2024 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There were over 144 attendees, several of whom are IEEE members.  There were technical presentations, outside demonstrations, vendors, antenna and LNA testing, and a banquet.  The predominate topic was on earth-moon-earth (EME) 50 MHz-47 Ghz along with grid mapping contacts.

On July 18th, members of the Cedar Rapids IEEE and Rotary had a tour of the Duane Arnold Solar projects with NextEra Energy. It was a beautiful summer day in Eastern Iowa!

On Pi Day, the Cedar Rapids IEEE had a pizza social and a presentation by Bob Sternowski, founder of Softronics in Marion.