Criteria for Fellow and Honorary Fellow Awards

This is the third in a series of articles from the SAWE Awards Committee.
The criteria for the Fellow and Honorary Fellow awards can be found in the attached files. These are presented in tandem because the criteria are similar. Note the differences in wording, viz., that a candidate for Fellow has “achieved distinction in Mass Properties Engineering, or has materially contributed to the advancement of the SAWE”; whereas, an Honorary Fellow has “achieved eminence in Mass Properties Engineering, or has made outstanding contributions to the advancement of the SAWE”.
A subtle distinction, but here are some additional guidelines: a candidate for Fellow has participated at the International level on committees or has led training sessions, or has been a key player in supporting the local chapter for an International Conference. Consistent and outstanding performance at the SAWE chapter level may also qualify, as would a distinct achievement in the field of Mass Properties Engineering.
Honorary Fellows are typically chosen from the field of Fellows and usually require a longer length of service at the International level in a key leadership position.

Hampton Roads Chapter Thanks Regional Conference Participants!

The SAWE Hampton Roads Conference Host Committee

The Hampton Roads Chapter of the SAWE would like to thank everyone who participated in our Regional Conference and helped make it a success!

We would like to especially thank our conference sponsors,Aerospace and Space Electronics LLC, for helping to make the Regional Conference possible.  Special mention must also be made of our exhibitors and break sponsors: Huntington Ingalls Industries, The Scale People, Intercomp, Altair, Shipweight, and GEC.  Finally, a special thank you to Jeanne Willoz-Egnor of the Mariner’s Museum for an enlightening lunch presentation on the history of technology and change in the America’s Cup sailing race.  

The Regional Conference featured a full day’s worth of technical presentations, which included discussions of measurement of uncertainty, how engineers are educated, building the world’s largest mining truck, and the SAWE’s proposed Mass Properties Certification Program. 

The Hampton Roads Chapter now turns its attention to preparing for the International Conference, to be held  May 18-23 in beautiful downtown Norfolk.  It is shaping up to be good one, with excellent training, technical content, the latest in SAWE Standards and Practices, and discussions on the future course of the society.  We invite all members of the SAWE and the larger mass properties community to participate. You won’t want to miss it!

Registration will open in the early part of 2019.  Keep an eye on the website and the SAWE Blog for updates.  

Criteria for Ed Payne Award

This is the second in a series of articles from the SAWE Awards Committee, the first having been an introduction and general summary of the process.

The criteria for the Ed Payne Award for Outstanding Young Engineer can be found in the attached file.  Nominees must be less than 35 years of age at the time of nomination.  The candidate will have contributed significantly to SAWE or the mass properties engineering profession within the scope of their limited career years.  

As stated previously, all nomination forms can be accessed through the SAWE Website at https://www.sawe.org/news/awardnominations2019, or by referencing the SAWE Operations Manual, Section1.3.4.

Do you know who this SAWE member is?

A gentleman by the name of Bruce Jacobs wrote to the society with a “historical question”.  He found a badge belonging to his grandmother with our name on it.  He was asking if we could supply any information we might have on her.  He only supplied her married and maiden name.
I responded to his email asking the obvious questions of where she worked and approximately when she retired.  His response was that she retired in the early 80’s from Rockwell or Northrop and worked on the space shuttle engine systems in some capacity.
Now comes the fun part—–he also sent a picture of Edna Jacobs Badge he found.  It shows that Edna Jacobs was a member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Aeronautical Weight Engineers.  Note the 3rd word.  This means the badge was from before we changed our name from Aeronautical to Allied.  This means before 1973!!
If anyone has any more information, Bruce would enjoy reading it.  I do not want to post his email address on the blog for obvious reasons, but I would be more than happy to pass the information to him.
Please respond to Ron Fox (ron.fox@sawe.org) to pass along any information you might have for Bruce, or he can get you in contact with him!

What does participation at a SAWE conference do for you?

For me, the recent SAWE conferences have given me renewed drive to go back to work and continue to earn my paycheck, but with increased personal investment in my career, my company, and my SAWE Family. Getting to listen to very interesting technical presentations, network with a like-minded group, engage our Exhibitors, and see growth of our profession first hand is an opportunity worth the personal investment of time and finances. You might be surprised by the response of your management when you build a solid business case for why they should invest in their future by promoting your participation in the SAWE. Resources for this exist on our website. Use The Welcome to the SAWE pitch as a baseline, https://www.sawe.org/system/files/Welcome_to_SAWE_Company_0.pdf. Use the 2018 SAWE Industry Survey results at https://www.sawe.org/blog/2018/08/12/sawe-survey-results/. Review tips for justification of attending a conference at https://www.sawe.org/conferences/conferencetips. INSPIRE the future by digesting Rod Van Dyk’s article in the 2018 Fall Journal, https://www.sawe.org/members/journal/fall_2018.

I encourage everyone who reads this to post at least a one liner answering the subject question.

Thanks,

Clint.

Annual Awards Information

The Awards Committee invites all SAWE members to submit worthy candidates for awards at the 2019 Annual SAWE International Conference. It is not too early to begin gathering supporting evidence for the candidates’ causes. We encourage members to collaborate with colleagues to gather this information. The focal point will be Chapter Directors, but any member can submit a candidate for consideration. The deadline for submitting candidate information is March 1st.
The criteria for awards in the following categories will be detailed in future blog posts: Ed Payne (Best Young Engineer), Fellow, Honorary Fellow, and Richard Boynton Lifetime Achievement. Keep an eye out for these posts and begin thinking of members of SAWE to nominate. In the meantime, please refer to the SAWE Website at https://www.sawe.org/news to obtain nomination forms.
The current Awards Committee consists of SAWE Honorary Fellows Pat Brown, Dudley Cate, Miguel Mascary, and Robert Zimmerman, with Bill Griffiths as Chairman.
Bill Griffiths

SAWE PowerPoint Template Released

The SAWE has created and released a template for use in all SAWE presentations.  There are three main reasons the SAWE has done this. First, much effort has been put into making a template that is easy to read by audiences and easy to create for presenters.  Secondly, by using a standardized template, our conferences, meetings, and outside presentations will sport a familiar look that is consistent across multiple presentations. And Thirdly, the new format reflects the modern professional style that the SAWE wishes to project to our members and public.

The template, which incorporates instructions on how to use the template, along with best practices for  PowerPoint charts can be found on the SAWE website at: https://www.sawe.org/conferences/callforpapers/presentation/template

The SAWE recognizes that some organizations require their employees to include mandatory company content on projected slides.  The SAWE will honor those requirements, although we expect presenters to follow the guidelines within the template and best practices.  These guidelines and best practices are there to ensure that slides are readable, particularly in non-ideal lighting and from both near and far from the projection screens.

We believe that this new template will enhance the SAWE and its members by ensuring we are viewed as professionals.

 

Robert Zimmerman

SAWE Vice President – Technical Director

Include SAWE in your Career Development and Goals

The SAWE provides many valuable technical resources to the mass properties community worldwide. This is a result of many years of participation, volunteerism, and corporate support. You have the opportunity to harvest information from these resources. You also have the opportunity to contribute by either adding technical content, development of standards, or actively supporting the SAWE organization’s committees, projects, and officers.
There are many career development opportunities within the SAWE’s activities. Some are technical, some administrative, and all of them build working relationships within an international infrastructure of the mass properties community that isn’t available anywhere else.
As you set your career goals each year, include opportunities within SAWE as an unrestricted avenue to extend your development technically, professionally, and as a leader.

SAWE Announces Peer Review Policy

The SAWE Board of Directors has approved a policy creating a Peer Review Committee (PRC) consisting of Subject Matter Experts within the SAWE who will review all technical Products prior to publication.  This committee has been formed in order to bring the SAWE in line with other organizations that ensure that Products published by the SAWE are technically accurate and useable by both our members and others who may access our Products.

The PRC is charged with reviewing papers, articles, Standards, and Practices, Handbooks, and Textbooks that the SAWE distributes for technical accuracy in logic, equations and calculations.  Any problems with these will be referred back to authors for reconciliation before approval for publication is issued. The Committee is primarily reviewing submissions for technical content accuracy, not for editorial problems such as misspellings or grammatical errors.  Guidelines for the committee are complete and distributed to committee members. The committee is checking submissions for inaccuracies in five (5) different categories. The first three categories define problems that must be reconciled before publication. The last two are essentially courtesy checks that reveal problems that are not technical in nature and will not result in mandatory reconciliation before publication approval is attained.

Category 1 (Equation Problems) checks submissions for inconsistencies within equations and incorrect equations.

Category 2 (Premise Problems) ensures that a submission supports any premises, plausibility and completeness of any examples, and for consistency between the stated objective and the conclusions drawn.

Category 3 (Logic Problems) checks submissions for illogical statements or references.

Submissions with Category 1, 2, or 3 difficulties will be returned to the author(s) with suggested remedies for reconciliation.  The revised products can then be resubmitted for review. Any Category 1, 2, and 3 difficulties must be resolved before publication approval will be issued.

The following two categories are general submission difficulties that are not technical in nature and will not be reasons for publication disapproval.  However, author(s) may choose to fix the errors before final acceptance for publication.

Category 4 (General Typos) are typographical errors spotted by the PRC which should be addressed.

Category 5 (Communication Clarity) The PRC can offer help in such areas as verb-subject agreement, run-on sentences, and use of colloquialisms.  The purpose here is to aid the author in increasing reader’s understanding of the submission. Authors may choose to ignore this advice.

Many companies already subject prospective Products to internal peer review, which is a positive that undoubtedly captures many of the impediments to publication that the PRC might catch.  In essence, the Peer Review Committee is but a final check by a panel of Subject Matter Experts and should be a welcome addition to the mass properties community.

The PRC is obligated to respond to submissions within one week (seven days) of receipt of a submission, with either constructive comments or approval as written.  The chairman of the Peer Review Committee has committed to respond to authors within the stated week whether or not a submission meets the Guidelines for publication, and if not, what actions must be pursued in order for a submission to be accepted for publication by the SAWE.  It is not the intention of the SAWE to prevent publication, nor impede the rate at which submissions are accepted, but to ensure that the SAWE is held in the high regard which the SAWE deserves.

 

Robert Zimmerman

SAWE Vice President – Technical Director