A chapter??s role in networking and continuing education [President´s Message]

The IEEE is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to serve its Members. The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) is one of the IEEE´s 38 technical Societies. We are a membership organization, and our primary goal is to serve you, so it is very important for us to understand our members and what they expect from us. We cannot use a one-sizefits- all approach as our membership is very diverse, both in terms on the job function (academia, graduate students, undergraduate students, industry, government) and geography. The Society´s Membership Board understands how important Chapters are in serving many of our members and how they help create a sense of community and pride in our profession. We have started to recognize Chapters that have done a great job through the Chapter of the Year Award: the Malaysia Chapter won the first award in 2011, the Tainan Chapter in 2012, and the Italy Chapter in 2013. We have also started a Chapter certification process to help all our Chapters leverage best practices. Chapters can also request funding from the SPS Membership Board (sp. bd.membership@ieee.org) for activities such as SPS seasonal schools, meetings featuring industry executives, outreach programs to get students in primary schools interested in signal processing, and more. Please help us increase the vitality of our Chapters by volunteering to serve on the board of your Chapter.