IEEE Southern Minnesota Section History
The IEEE Southern Minnesota Section was formed 50 years ago on August 22, 1963.
The Southern Minnesota Section is part of Region 4 which encompasses the upper midwest in the United States.Regions are organized into sections with 24 sections in our region 4. We have 332 members of the 21,146 region 4 members ranking us as a small to medium sized section. Including guests, student, affiliate, and associate members we current mail 548 meeting notices each meeting. Our section is geographically large and extends roughly from just beyond Mankato, MN at the West to Tomah, WI at the east and from Northfield, MN at the north to the Iowa border at the south. Our neighboring sections are Siouxland to our west, Madison (WI) to the east, Central Illinois to the south (on the east end), Central Iowa to the south (on the west end), Cedar Rapids (IA) to the south (central), and Twin Cities (MN) to the north.
The IEEE Coulee Subsection was formed on May 30, 1987 to better serve the areas in our section east of the Mississippi River and directly on the river's west side. The subsection is its own entity but within the Southern Minnesota Section. Coulee holds its own meetings and has 44 members (also included in the Southern Minnesota count).
IEEE has 38 societies which specialize by technology. Sections may have chapters in one or more of these societies depending on member interest. The Southern Minnesota Section has three chapters:
- Computer Society Chapter - formed in 1987
- Joint Chapter in Communications, Signal Processing, and Control Systems (one chapter in three societies) - formed in 1999
- Engineering in Medicine and Biology Chapter - formed in 2007
In addition the section has an "affinity group" in the Consultants Network and an Employment network.
Most of our technical meetings are in one of the chapter disciplines. Typical of small to mid sized sections we deliver our technical content at the section level with invitations to all members regardless of Society affiliation (and recent guests).
Our member distribution is Rochester centric; almost all of our meetings are held in Rochester. In recent years we have been doing remote broadcasts in an attempt to better reach our more remote members.
IEEE Southern Minnesota holds a minimum of 8 technical meetings per year and average about 10. Our attendance averages 40-50.
IEEE Geographic Unit Organizing Document - Southern Minnesota
