IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007 - 30

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Bagley Endowed Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Mississippi State University, in
Starkville, and is the department head.
She believes more women who have
made significant contributions should
become IEEE Fellows.
Currently, Regions 1-6 (United
States) boast the highest number of
female Fellows with 116, compared with
4,135 male Fellows. Region 10 (Asia) has
ten female Fellows and 757 male Fellows;
Region 8 (Europe) has 15 female Fellows
and 710 male Fellows; Region 7 (Canada)
has five female Fellows and 234 male Fellows; and Region 9 (South America) has
no female Fellows and 29 male Fellows.
The total number of male Fellows is
5,865, compared with 146 female Fellows. In 2007, 268 members became Fellows, 18 of which were female. The top
two Societies with female Fellows are the
IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE
Communication Society.
But to boost the number of female
Fellows, first they have to get nominated.

The Nominees Please
Rosann Marosy, senior administrator of
Fellow activities, and Bruce McClung,
Fellow chair, explain the nomination
process.
First and most important, self-nominations are not accepted. If you want to
become a Fellow, focus on doing your
work to the best of your ability. Get
involved in IEEE activities, become
active in one or more technical societies,
volunteer for local conferences, develop
professional contacts, network with
peers, write and present technical papers,
or author a book on some special field of
electrotechnology.
Ideally, your nominator should know
you well enough to be able to determine
if you're qualified to become a Fellow.
They must be able to list your accomplishments, your IEEE activities, awards,
and society and committee memberships. Nominators should only nominate
individuals if they have contributed significantly to the advancement or application of electrotechnology.
McClung and Marosy say the biggest
mistake nominators make on the appli-

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

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cation is using superfluous words or
phrases like "gigantic," "extremely,"
"immeasurable," "the only one to ever
achieve," or "the world would be a different place without the work of the [nominee]," to describe the technical
accomplishments of the nominee.
Lengthy attachments to the application
are also discouraged.
If you find out you've been nominated, do not contact the IEEE Fellow
committee members or staff directly for
information regarding your application
status. Your nominator should be the
only liaison you have into the Fellow
process. If you're a Senior Member, it's
best to get involved in IEEE activities
to get recognized by coworkers or
peers, who can then nominate you for
Fellow status.

For She's a Jolly Good Fellow
Rajala says she was nominated for Fellow
status by a colleague while teaching at
North Carolina State University, in
Raleigh. During her 27 years there, she
was a full-time professor, a director of
the Center for Advanced Computing and
Communication, a university cooperative
research center, and an associate dean
for both academic affairs and research
and graduate programs.
So how did Rajala get nominated?
"My contributions to engineering education got me recognized and nominated.
Especially my efforts to improve the quality of the educational experience for
undergraduate students, especially for
women and minorities in engineering."
Rajala led an initiative to develop and
implement a new team-based active
learning introduction to engineering
courses at North Carolina State for over
a thousand incoming freshmen, which
helped students work in teams and
improved their communication skills. At
North Carolina State's College of Engineering, she established the Women in
Engineering program, which supports
women students in engineering and the
K-12 Outreach program, which aims to
educate students and teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools about
engineering. She also formed an engineering faculty development program

WINTER 2007/2008

designed to help faculty succeed in
teaching and research. In addition to
her educational contributions, Rajala is
an active researcher with technical contributions in the areas of image and
video processing.
Prathima Agrawal, who in 1989
became the first female from Asia to
become a Fellow, is chairperson of the
IEEE committee that selects Fellows
from every IEEE Society and Council.
She is currently the Samuel Ginn Distinguished Professor and director of the
Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center, which is a new undergraduate program for students earning a
bachelor's degree in Wireless Engineering at Auburn University, in Alabama.
Agrawal says to become a Fellow you
should gain exposure in the engineering
field. For example, publish your work in
IEEE publications, develop patents or
publicly available software or hardware
systems. Agrawal says she got her name
out there by getting a few papers published in IEEE transactions and conference proceedings.
"I came up with new ideas that
advanced the state of the art in VLSI
design," Agrawal explains. "These ideas
were adopted in the company I worked
for, AT&T Bell Labs, in designing large
VLSI circuits with greater accuracy and
efficiency than before. They were captured in several publications and
patents."
Agrawal says she also gave many talks
on her ideas in major universities such
as Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
in Cambridge, Stanford University, in
Palo Alto, California, and the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, among
others. She took part in several major
conferences such as the IEEE/ACM
Design Automation Conference and the
International Conference on Computer
Aided Design. She advises those wishing
to become Fellows to take part in committee representations, editorial boards,
conferences, and seminars.
According to Agrawal, if you work in
academia or industry, especially industrial research organizations, becoming a
Fellow will enhance your career. "Even
in corporations that are more linked to

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007