IEEE Senior Member Ralph W. Russell is scouting out the next generation of electrical engineers and he’s finding them through his work with the Boy Scouts of America. For the past 25 years, he’s led a partnership between the IEEE and the Boy Scouts to promote the technological literacy of young people.

Russell, an engineer at Dominion Virginia Power in Richmond, Va., has been active in the scouts since 1953, when he was a scout himself in Ashland, Ky. He also later shepherded his two sons, now well into adulthood, through the boy scouting program and his daughter through the girl scouting program.

“To be a well-rounded person, you need to make sure mental, physical, religious, and social [elements] are in balance,” Russell explains. “All these things are covered in the scout oath, and I try to promote these in my life.”

Russell is most proud of his role in enhancing the scouts’ hands-on instructional material for merit badges in electricity, electronics, and computing—collectively referred to as emerit badges. The scouts have awarded merit badges for electricity since 1911. Late last year, Russell received a two-year, US$25 000 grant from the IEEE Foundation to develop a similar educational program for girls and to bring his IEEE emerit badge.org program to the Boy Scouts’ U.S. National Scout Jamboree, to be held 25 July–3 August in Caroline County, Va. [See “IEEE Foundation Supports Scouts, Sections Congress,” January.] The jamboree is an event held every four years that draws approximately 40 000 scouts from all over the United States and several other countries.

Since 1981, as part of the IEEE’s precollege technology education program, IEEE volunteers have staffed either the electronics or electricity merit badge booth at the jamboree, where they help scouts with learning the material they need to know to earn the three emerit badges.

Boy Scouts earn merit badges by studying a topic—whether it is camping, woodworking, or electronics, to name just a few—and then showing their scout leader that they’ve mastered the information by taking a test or giving a demonstration. The electricity merit badge materials start with the basics—positive and negative charges on atoms—then go on to explain how electricity works in a flashlight and how to build an electromagnet. The scouts also learn about alternating and direct currents and why water and electricity don’t mix.

“We’re trying to raise the level of excitement about engineering, especially in the electronic and electrical fields,” Russell says. The IEEE emerit badge.org material can be used by anyone who wants to teach children about electronics or electricity. The material is available for download from Russell’s Web site, http://www.emeritbadges.org.

When the scout organization decided in 2004 to update its teaching pamphlet on electricity—which Russell dubs the “Cliffs Notes version of electrical engineering”—they turned to Russell. He gathered a group of IEEE staff and members involved in scouting to review the material, which included information on electrical wiring in a home and car and an overview of different kinds of batteries. After they selected which material to use, they submitted the text for peer review, following a procedure similar to that used for articles in IEEE technical journals. The group also added information on electrical engineering history, courtesy of the IEEEHistoryCenter.

“We’ve taken these merit badges and supporting documents and put meat on it,” Russell says.

A technical writer for the Boy Scouts then integrated the IEEE’s comments into the final electricity merit badge pamphlet, which was released at the end of 2004. The Boy Scouts credited the IEEE’s help by publishing the IEEE logo on the back of the pamphlet.

Before the IEEE would commit money to the IEEE emerit badge.org project for the Boy Scouts, it wanted Russell to address a few issues, such as how the program could be expanded worldwide and how it could include girls. The foundation also wanted to make sure the project did not discriminate against gay scouts. In recent years, the Boy Scouts have come under fire for excluding gay scout leaders.

Russell emphasizes that his emerit badge program does not discriminate. “Whether you’re gay, black, white, a boy, or a girl—if you’re interested in technology, we’ll teach it to you,” he says.

Russell responded to one of the concerns by contacting the Girl Scouts of America, which he says has a manager for their Girls Go Tech program. Russell is now working with Girl Scout representatives—including IEEE Member and IEEE Spectrum Advisory Board member Jill Tietjen, who is also president of the Girl Scouts’ Mile High Council in Colorado, and IEEE member Lynn Simms, past president of the Commonwealth Council in Virginia—to create an electronic engineering education program for young women. To show his commitment to the Girl Scouts, Russell became a lifetime member of the group.

He plans to contact two global scouting organizations—the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, based in London, and the World Organization of the Scout Movement, in Geneva, Switzerland—to share his IEEE emerit badge.org program.  And he is still involved in his local scouting district, even though his children are grown. What’s more, his grandson is just about the right age to begin scouting.

For more information on the emerit badge program, visit http://www.emeritbadges.org.