SOCIETY NEWS Workshop on Future Directions in Circuits and Systems Education This one day workshop was held in Seattle on the day after ISCAS and I am very happy to give you a brief report about it and share with you some of our experiences. The participants were a mixed audience representing both academia and industry as well as students' and instructors' viewpoints. Moreover, a number of participants from academia had a previous industrial experience. The teaching experience of the participants included topics on circuit theory, communication networks, signal processing, system theory, and communications. It was an active group of about 25 participants that discussed the problems, issues, valuable approaches, and recommended actions. Those who missed it can find the details of the presentations and the discussions from the workshop webpage http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/sista/CASeducationworkshop2008. The findings and common understanding over the regions and the experiences were remarkably convergent, and mutually stimulating. The participants reached consensus on the following main conclusions: At most places one experienced a lack of interest of students in circuits courses. The students have to be motivated from "inside" with hands-on experience in parallel with the theory that is taught. Circuits and systems should be "fun". In order to address these issues, the following main actions are recommended for our CAS Society: Establish the CASS Education and Outreach Technical Committee. Prepare a Special Issue of the CAS Magazine reporting experiences and adopted teaching models. Education and Outreach Technical Committee to generate a position paper. Develop a dedicated web page and collect material related to the education issues to be uploaded. In the workshop minutes available on the webpage, you can find a list of 14 further actions. For each of these actions the plans are being developed. So if you want to contribute Sign up to become a member of the Technical Committee by sending me an email Send me your suggestions for educational material that can be made available on the web Send me your ideas about issues for the position paper. Joos Vandewalle, VP Technical Activities Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (Email: Joos.Vandewalle@esat.kuleuven.be) http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/sista/CASeducationworkshop2008mailto:Joos.Vandewalle@esat.kuleuven.beshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1
VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3, JUNE 2008