The task of the committee is, broadly speaking, to provide events and services that address needs and encourage participation of our underrepresented demographics, while being of interest and use to the community at large.

A recent brief presentation on this Outreach Committee was given to the officers of the IT Society.

As part of this effort, we have identified mentoring as being an important component of success and a particular challenge for some of our members. We will therefore continue our successful mentorship program, open to all . A typical mentor/mentee pairing would a faculty member or professional in industry mentoring a graduate student or postdoc; a senior faculty or industry researcher mentoring a junior faculty or researcher. We would strongly encourage mentees to become also mentors currently or in the future.

A mentor/mentee relationship will be a priori a two year one. A mentor will agree to communicating with his/her mentee roughly a few times a year every to provide professional advice and feedback, e.g., by helping the mentee with proposal writing or by introducing him to potential collaborators. We are also having a yearly mentor/mentee event at ISIT. The only requirement for the mentoring program is that a mentor/mentee should be part of the IEEE IT Society for the duration of the mentoring period.

Anyone who is interested in joining the mentoring program (as a mentor/mentee or both) is invited to sign up at the following address: http://www.itsoc.org/people/committees/outreach/mentoring/mentoring-program .

Society Outreach Committee
(Joerg Kliewer, Elza Erkip, Daniela Tuninetti, Bobak Nazer)