IEEE Kansas City Section History

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Background

The Section covers a geographical area that extends well beyond Kansas City. The northern edge is the northern edge of Missouri, and the southern edge is the southern edge of Missouri. Thus, Springfield, MO, is part of the Kansas City Section. It also extends east well into Missouri and west well into Kansas. It shares its western border with the Wichita Section.

The administrative seat and locus of activity is Overland Park, KS. Overland Park is a suburb of Kansas City, MO. This metropolitan area has more IEEE members than any other city in the Section, primarily because of large employers of engineers. These firms include Sprint (Overland Park), Black & Veatch (Overland Park), and Burns & McDonnell (Kansas City, MO).

The executive committee meets in Overland Park or in some other suburb of Kansas City. The near-monthly dinner meetings are in Overland Park, but other activities occur throughout the Section.

In March 2009, the Southwest Missouri sub-section was elevated to a Section.

A Happening Section

The Kansas City Section is a four-time consecutive winner of the Outstanding Large Section Award in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002). It has also produced the Outstanding Member 3 years out of four, being Dr. Dale Rummer, 1999; Jim Berard, 2001 and Mark Lamendola, 2002.

We have dinner meetings nearly every month, but also have other activities on our calendar. These include our annual Engineers Week Conference, a tradition started by Jim Berard.

We had an active job connection program in 2008, which helps put our members back to work during these times of heavy layoffs and unemployment. The Kansas City area has been one of the hardest hit, and we have responded with several ways of assisting our members.

In 2005, the IEEE Kansas City Section, and the University of Missouri - Kansas City hosted the 2008 IEEE Region 5 Technical, Professional, and Student Conference.

Notable Members

Members of this section include outstanding engineers in many companies. It's hard to list all of the notable, outstanding folks, but here is a short list of just some of them:

• Rick Bush, editor of Transmission & Distribution World Magazine. Rick has appeared in television stories about engineers.
• Mike Eby, editor of EC&M Magazine.
• Ed Rafter, a noted speaker and power engineer. Ed was a major influence on the development of APC's PowerStructure--a revolutionary new UPS product.
• Mark Lamendola, author of over 3,500 articles, consultant, and noted public speaker.
• Joe Alvarez, Director of the 7x24 Exchange, Midwest Chapter. This is the largest of all the 7x24 chapters, and its conferences consistently get rated the best of all the 7x24 conferences.
• Dr. Dale Rummer, expert witness, educator, mentor. Dr. Rummer has a long list of accomplishments. Among them: solving a safety problem that nearly forced Kansas City--"The City of Fountains" to shut down its many beautiful Plaza fountains.
• Dawn VanDee, published author and 2003 Section Chair.
• Fred Schnittker, Lifetime Honorary Officer, who spent countless hours in retirement bringing engineering appreciation to future generations of engineering students in our public schools.
• Keith Ebel, businessman, who has come to be known as "Mr. Wireless," through work with Proximity Wireless, which he founded.