Oral-History:Rosann Marosy
About Rosann Marosy
Rosann Marosy, Fellows Activities Manager, Member and Geographic Activities retired on 30 June 2023 with more than twenty-three years of service at IEEE. Marosy was born in New York and raised in New Jersey, graduating from Highland Park High School in Highland Park, New Jersey. She attended Middlesex County College for two semesters and took some classes at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey before taking a full-time job at New Century, a publisher of children’s books. After marrying, she was a stay-at-home mother for fifteen years, raising her three children. However, she “kept a foot in the door” at New Century. She later returned to the workforce full time, first with Prudential and then IEEE. She always worked with the IEEE Fellow’s applications and soon became the IEEE Staff lead working with the IEEE Fellow Committee and making many improvements to the administrative process.
About the Interview
ROSANN MAROSY: An Interview Conducted by Mary Ann Hellrigel for the IEEE History Center, 5 July 2023.
Interview #897 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc.
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Rosann Marosy, #897, an oral history conducted on 5 July 2023 by Mary Ann Hellrigel, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
Interview
INTERVIEWEE: Rosann Marosy
INTERVIEWER: Mary Ann Hellrigel
DATE: 5 July 2023
PLACE: Virtual
Early life and education
Hellrigel:
Today is July 5, 2023. This is Mary Ann Hellrigel. I’m the Institutional Historian Archivist at the IEEE History Center. I’m with Rosann Marosy who’s a recent retiree from IEEE staff. She was the IEEE Fellows Activity Manager and was with IEEE almost twenty-four years. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, and for helping document the history of IEEE.
Marosy:
You’re welcome.
Hellrigel:
I’d like to start with when and where you were born, if you’d like to share that. The year is fine.
Marosy:
Sure. I was born in Bronxville, New York, in 1957.
Hellrigel:
Did you grow up in Bronxville?
Marosy:
No, I was there for a couple years. My dad passed, and my mom was from New Brunswick, New Jersey, and we moved back there. I grew up in New Brunswick up until sixth grade and then moved to Highland Park, New Jersey.
Hellrigel:
Oh, that’s great. So, you’re a Middlesex County native.
Marosy:
Yes, I am.
Hellrigel:
So, your dad passed when you were very young. Did you have any siblings?
Marosy:
I have one older brother.
Hellrigel:
What did your mom do for a living?
Marosy:
She was a seamstress.
Hellrigel:
Your late father, what did he do?
Marosy:
From what I was told he worked on roads, and he was a volunteer fireman.
Hellrigel:
Your mom, what was her level of education?
Marosy:
Eighth grade.
Hellrigel:
Now, you’re growing up in New Brunswick and Highland Park, what was that like? You’re growing up in the 1960s, 1970s.
Marosy:
The beginning of my life, I grew up in the projects, so it was quite interesting to learn to be around individuals that were in a similar situation as my mother where there was just one parent most of the time, but I had a lot of fun as a kid. There was a huge playground, and I was just interested in just playing with kids and being outside.
Hellrigel:
This is an apartment complex in New Brunswick, the projects?
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
What was it called?
Marosy:
Wright Place.
Hellrigel:
That’s where you lived, and then sixth grade you moved to Highland Park?
Marosy:
We moved to Highland Park. My mother was able to save enough money to purchase a home, and I grew up in Highland Park and I started seventh grade at Highland Park Middle School.
Hellrigel:
How was that different?
Marosy:
Oh, it was very different.
Hellrigel:
You’re just jumping across the river metaphorically.
Marosy:
But it was very different. It was very different because kindergarten through sixth grade I attended St. Peters Catholic School, so when I moved to Highland Park, I was able to go public school. I was thrilled because public school offered many more courses that I could take. I could take a language; I could take gym. There was just so many more courses that I could take.
Hellrigel:
St. Peters, that was a large school? I’ve been to St. Peters the church.
Marosy:
At the time I had maybe 100 students in my grammar school classes, and at the time that was significant. The high school, the classes were probably double that size.
Hellrigel:
Were you parishioners of St. Peters?
Marosy:
Actually, no; St. Mary’s in New Brunswick. The only reason we went there is because my mother didn’t drive, and my grandfather and my aunt who drove us to church, that’s where they went, and so we belonged to St. Mary’s.
Hellrigel:
So, then in New Brunswick, your mom’s family. Large extended family?
Marosy:
Yes, she had nine brothers and sisters.
Hellrigel:
Wow, that’s a large family.
Marosy:
Yes. My dad had eleven.
Hellrigel:
Was he from New Brunswick?
Marosy:
No. He was originally from Pennsylvania, but he was from Bronxville, New York, or Tuckahoe, New York. I have a lot of family that’s still there.
Hellrigel:
So, your mom moved up that way for a job?
Marosy:
No, because she got married. That’s where my father worked, so she went there, but once he passed, she moved back home to her family.
Hellrigel:
So, you have one brother and he’s a little older?
Marosy:
He’s three years older than me.
Hellrigel:
What was your mom’s name?
Marosy:
Frances.
Hellrigel:
Frances. And her maiden name?
Marosy:
Fiorino.
Hellrigel:
You could spell that one.
Marosy:
Sure. F-I-O-R-I-N-O.
Hellrigel:
So, she came from a large Italian family.
Marosy:
She did, both my sides, so I’m 100 per cent Italian.
Hellrigel:
You’re growing up in New Brunswick K-6. You said you went to the park. What else did you do for fun?
Marosy:
I took dance lessons for almost eleven years. I played sports, but primarily I played on the St. Peters CYO basketball. I ran some track and roller skated. I just liked being outdoors.
Hellrigel:
Also, New Brunswick is a college town. Did Rutgers have any impact on you growing up?
Marosy:
A little bit. As I got older, I attended some frats.
Hellrigel:
So, you’re growing up. How are you doing in school? Did you like school?
Marosy:
I wasn’t the best of students.
Hellrigel:
You now are going to go to the public school, and you liked it because there’s more opportunity there. Were you college prep? What was your focus?
Marosy:
I wanted to be an architect and kind of got talked out of that, so I ended up doing business. I attended Middlesex County College and did okay, but my heart wasn’t in it. But I found my husband, we got married, we had children right away, and so I never really finished school. I did take some classes at Rutgers, but I just never finished. Once I got a job and I had children...
Hellrigel:
We’re going to unpack this. Why did you want to be an architect?
Marosy:
I took some classes in high school, and I just enjoyed drawing and just architectural--I don’t know, I just enjoyed it.
Hellrigel:
Who persuaded you not to follow that?
Marosy:
It was pretty much counselors and everybody, because at that time I think more men did it, not women, and they were looking at why don’t you want to be a teacher or a nurse, and I didn’t want to do either. So, I did choose business, and again, that wasn’t my preference.
Hellrigel:
So, you graduated Highland Park High School.
Marosy:
I did.
Hellrigel:
What year was that?
Marosy:
1975.
Hellrigel:
Were you involved in any activities in high school?
Marosy:
Yes, I was one of the editors of the yearbook. I did all kinds of sports. I played field hockey, track, softball, and basketball. I was on the bowling team. A lot of sports. Varsity clubs. Yes, I was pretty involved.
Hellrigel:
Did you have any part-time jobs?
Marosy:
I did, I worked at McDonald’s.
Hellrigel:
What were you favorite subjects?
Marosy:
I enjoyed math; obviously, gym class. I enjoyed English, too.
Hellrigel:
What did you dislike?
Marosy:
I wasn’t a big fan of history, but I enjoy the subject today. I think it was the teacher. Not that I’m necessarily blaming it on them, but I think it was the way it was taught.
Hellrigel:
Sometimes you were just pushed to memorize, and the story is lost.
Marosy:
Yes, that’s exactly right.
Hellrigel:
You graduate. Did your mom expect you to go to college?
Marosy:
Yes, absolutely.
Hellrigel:
Did your brother go to college?
Marosy:
No, he didn’t. He went on, he got a job, and he made money, and that was it.
Hellrigel:
But you’re going to go to college, and you go to Middlesex County College because...?
Marosy:
We could afford it. I had to pay for school, so it was something I could afford working part-time.
Hellrigel:
How long did you attend?
Marosy:
Just two semesters.
Hellrigel:
Then you met your husband at the college?
Marosy:
No, then I took some classes at Rutgers, and then I got a full-time job, and that’s where I met my husband.
Hellrigel:
What was this job?
Marosy:
I worked for a company that wrote children’s books. It was called New Century.
Hellrigel:
New Century. How did you end up there?
Marosy:
Looked in the newspaper and applied.
Hellrigel:
What did you do there?
Marosy:
A little bit of everything, kind of like an assistant. Whenever they needed me, they needed me to help test because they were going from books to actually writing on the computer for kids to read. So, I helped out just wherever they needed me.
Hellrigel:
You’re going to meet your husband at this company?
Marosy:
No, I met him in a bar.
Hellrigel:
Old Queens?
Marosy:
No, it wasn’t Old Queens, it was actually a place in East Brunswick. I was turning twenty and I was celebrating my birthday with a friend and my husband was there, and that’s how we met. The ironic thing is that he played little league with my brother. I found out he also went to St. Peters. His family, my mother knew of his parents, and it was quite interesting. We actually rode the same school bus together and didn’t know it.
Hellrigel:
Wow. So, your brother could vouch for him then a little bit.
Marosy:
Yes. Good guy.
Hellrigel:
So, this is Mr. Marosy?
Marosy:
That’s correct. Bill.
Hellrigel:
Bill. Then you get married fairly young?
Marosy:
I did. I got married pretty much a year after I met my husband.
Hellrigel:
So, this was about 1979 or so?
Marosy:
It was 1979.
Hellrigel:
Then you’re going to have a few children?
Marosy:
I had three. I have two boys and a girl, and we had them right away.
Hellrigel:
Did you work full-time when you were having kids?
Marosy:
No, I was able to stay home for about fifteen years.
Hellrigel:
What does your husband or did your husband do for a living?
Marosy:
He worked for Prudential for about nineteen years, and when he got laid off, he worked for Rutgers.
Hellrigel:
An admin (administrator)?
Marosy:
Yes, admin. He was a director of planning with grants and so forth.
Hellrigel:
At Prudential he was in the insurance field?
Marosy:
Yes, he did the finance part.
Hellrigel:
So, you’re going to have three children, and you stay home for fifteen years, and you’re raising your children around Middlesex County.
Marosy:
Yes. I live in Piscataway.
Hellrigel:
These three towns [New Brunswick, Highland Park, and Piscataway] are sort of tangential to each other, so you didn’t stray too far.
Marosy:
No, I didn’t, because family, everybody, was close.
Hellrigel:
They’re growing up. Then after fifteen years of full-time motherhood--I guess you were involved with PTA and things like that?
Marosy:
I did a little bit of that, yes. Girl Scouts.
Hellrigel:
You were a troop leader?
Marosy:
Yes, I was.
Hellrigel:
How’d that work for you?
Marosy:
It was fun. I was also a soccer coach.
Hellrigel:
For boys or girls?
Marosy:
Mix, I did both.
Hellrigel:
I guess when they’re really little it’s co-ed.
Marosy:
I did two years with just all girls because my daughter got a little bit older.
Hellrigel:
When do you start to go back to the employment world, paid employment world?
Marosy:
When my husband got laid off from Prudential. My youngest at that point was in junior high, and so we needed insurance we needed medical coverage, and I figured they were old enough that they could kind of be on their own.
Hellrigel:
How was that transition? Was that okay with you?
Marosy:
I always did a little freelance. I always had a little side job. When I left New Century they hired me back to do some freelance, so here and there I’d always kept one foot in the door.
Prudential
Hellrigel:
Is this when you show up at IEEE?
Marosy:
No. Ironically, when my husband got laid off at Prudential, I got hired by Prudential.
Hellrigel:
Oh, gosh. That’s weird.
Marosy:
The weird part was the gentleman that laid him off, which wasn’t his boss, was the person that hired me and had no idea that we were related.
Hellrigel:
Even though you have the same last name?
Marosy:
He was sort of the hatchet man, so he didn’t really put two and two together. Because my husband had a lot of friends there, I put my résumé there thinking they’ll spread it around, and that’s how I got hired.
Hellrigel:
This is going to be admin work?
Marosy:
Yes, it was admin stuff.
Hellrigel:
You got to keep the same insurance policy?
Marosy:
Pretty much.
Hellrigel:
So, you didn’t have to shift doctors. Sometimes different companies have different plans.
Marosy:
It was interesting, because when I did get hired at Prudential my husband got hired around the same time at Rutgers, so we were insured very well.
Hellrigel:
Yes, Rutgers’ has a good plan. Did you ever think, he’s got full-time again, I can step away from full-time?
Marosy:
No, I think at that point I just felt that my kids were kind of old enough, that I knew I wasn’t going to stay home for the rest of my life, that I wanted some type of career, so there was no need.
Hellrigel:
At this point did you think of going back to college?
Marosy:
I did. I did think about it, but I think juggling everything, and I was so many years removed that I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to fail, that’s probably it, because I know I had opportunities. Even at IEEE they would have paid for classes.
Hellrigel:
How long were you at Prudential?
Starting at IEEE
Marosy:
I was there five years and got laid off, and within a couple months got hired at IEEE.
Hellrigel:
How did you find the IEEE job?
Marosy:
The same way, newspaper. Just applied.
Hellrigel:
They advertised in the newspaper?
Marosy:
They did. They didn’t have anything online at that time, or they might have been just maybe starting, but primarily the newspaper. I would go through it every day.
Hellrigel:
I forget the New Brunswick newspaper.
Marosy:
Oh, the Home News.
Hellrigel:
Home News. So, that’s what you were reading?
Marosy:
We were getting the Home News, so I’d probably seen it in there. I haven’t thought about that in a while.
Hellrigel:
What job did you apply for?
Marosy:
Anything. What I did at Prudential, I oversaw their MDRT program, which is the Million Dollar Round Table. The insurance agents, if they reached a certain level--because they would get commission for various policies--if they reached a certain plateau, they could attend this MDRT meeting. So, I did some traveling for Prudential, and I would go to different conferences and try to encourage agents to sell various products and so forth.
Hellrigel:
So, you’re managing this program, and so that puts you in--
Marosy:
The Fellows.
Hellrigel:
So, you apply, and they match you with the Fellows opening? HR matches you for the Fellows job?
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Did you come in as a director of that project, or you were working with other people?
Marosy:
No, I wasn’t the manager of the Fellow Program at the time, but within a couple years I became the manager.
Hellrigel:
Who was manager before you?
Marosy:
I reported to Marybeth Denike who’s still there on a board [and currently Director, Awards Activities in Corporate Activities].
Move to MGA
Hellrigel:
Then were the Fellows always at MGA (Member and Geographic Activities)?
Marosy:
No. It was so funny, the first day we were part of the Communication Department, and then the second day they switched us to Corporate Activities. We were in Corporate Activities, and then we moved to MGA. I’ve been in MGA about eleven or twelve years.
Hellrigel:
Do you know why they shifted you around?
Marosy:
I have no idea other than I believe it was the manager there at the time. The Management Council. His name was Matt Loeb.
Hellrigel:
So, he decided to shift you to MGA?
Marosy:
It was quite interesting because HR and Payroll, nobody had any idea. He just came up to me one day and said, by the way, on Monday you’re going to MGA.
Hellrigel:
I know at that point he was in charge of Corporate Activities.
Marosy:
Yes, he was.
Hellrigel:
That is a little strange.
Marosy:
Oh, it was strange, because at least CJ (Cecelia Jankowski) had told me that he just dumped it on her.
Hellrigel:
Wow. Yes, because all the other Awards are run out of boards, which is now Corporate Activities.
Marosy:
Right. But at the time, after I reported to Marybeth [Denike], I reported to Fern Katronetsky. They used to bang heads, her and Matt, so he moved her to Education (Educational Activities) just because I think he just didn’t want to work with her. So, since I reported to her, why not get rid of Fellows?
Hellrigel:
Then at some point she was in charge of what became the IEEE Foundation for a little bit.
Marosy:
She did do a little Foundation when she was down in Corporate Activities.
Hellrigel:
Yes, wow.
Marosy:
But the ironic thing is when I worked with MGA for a couple of years I oversaw the Life Committee, and I ended up working a little bit with the Foundation because of the Life Committee.
Hellrigel:
Who now runs the Life Members Committee?
Marosy:
It is still out of MGA. It actually split. Part of it is run out of MGA, and the other part is run out of the Foundation and Corporate Activities.
Hellrigel:
Some of the Life Members weren’t happy about all of that.
Marosy:
They couldn’t understand it, but the money is coming out of MGA, because they have affinity groups that they get some of the funds and so forth.
Hellrigel:
Yes, they just changed it now. I don’t know if they have a non-voting member on the Foundation. There was something about taking funds and not having a voice. Marybeth Denike, she’s still in Awards.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
So, now you go to MGA. You have a new boss, and that’s CJ (Cecelia Jankowski). Did the job change when you moved from Corporate Activities to MGA?
Marosy:
No, not really.
Fellows program administration process, colleagues
Hellrigel:
Okay, so now we’ll talk then about what is a manager of the [IEE] Fellow Program. What did you do?
Marosy:
I supported the [IEEE] Fellow Committee, primarily just ran the program, and like I said, supported whatever the members of that committee needed.
Hellrigel:
So, by “ran the program,” the Fellows Committee is tasked to review the applications of the Fellows candidates every year?
Marosy:
Right, and there’s a whole scoring process that it entails. So, nominations come in, they get reviewed first by Society committees. Once that’s done then they get reviewed by the Fellow Committee, so it’s a pretty--or it was for me--complex scoring system.
Hellrigel:
So, these applications come in and they’re going to be reviewed by Society committees. What if people aren’t in a Society? Did you ever have that?
Marosy:
For a Fellow they didn’t even have to belong to a Society in order to have their nomination reviewed by a particular Society. It wasn’t a requirement. I found that to be a little unusual.
Hellrigel:
They would just have the Society and the Fellow’s technical field review them, whether they were worthy of becoming a Fellow or not.
Marosy:
Pretty much, yes.
Hellrigel:
What’s the calendar year like? How did your day-to-day calendar year go?
Marosy:
I just did a little bit of everything. I managed the website. There were various stats that we took care of. Answering emails, corresponding with all kinds of volunteers, and I had to work with anybody in-house.
Hellrigel:
The process of nominations starts rolling in at a certain day, like October 1 or something.
Marosy:
The system would open roughly October 1st, and the deadline was March 1st. That has now changed because of this new process.
Hellrigel:
So, what’s the process now?
Marosy:
One of the things that I had recommended which they are following is to open the system November 1st and close it on February 7th.
Hellrigel:
Why’d you come up with those days?
Marosy:
Because the Board of Directors introduced a couple of new steps, and in order to make it fit within a particular calendar or timeline I had suggested that we change some of the deadlines for the review. For example, if the deadline is February 7th, you have societies that will do their review, and once they do their review it now goes to another group which they’re calling Cohorts to do their review, and then it goes to the Fellow Committee. So, to be able to insert cohorts I had to open up some of the timeline.
Hellrigel:
So, now they have three reviews?
Marosy:
There pretty much will be three reviews, yes.
Hellrigel:
Why did the Board of Directors put in those new steps, for example, the review by a cohort?
Marosy:
They felt that there wasn’t enough diversity. They were trying to get more nominations elevated from industry for various reasons.
Hellrigel:
This process, you do this by yourself?
Marosy:
At one point I’d had two people reporting to me. That did change, and I always had at least one person reporting to me, so between the two of us we pretty much ran the program.
Hellrigel:
Wow. Who did you work with this year?
Marosy:
Jenn Guida.
Hellrigel:
She’s been doing this a while with you?
Marosy:
Just about a year and a half.
Hellrigel:
Did she come from elsewhere in IEEE?
Marosy:
Ironically, I met Jenn when I worked for Prudential, and Jenn worked for IEEE when I first started at IEEE. So, I got laid off from Prudential, went to IEEE. She wasn’t happy at Prudential. She called me up and it was just a coincidence that there was an opening that she came over to IEEE, and we worked together on the [IEEE] Fellow Program. She started her family, left within two or three years, and she was home raising her family. Now that Donna had left there was an opening, and we always stayed in touch, and I asked her. She obviously applied for the job. I said I can’t guarantee anything, but they hired her back, and so she came back to do Fellows.
Hellrigel:
What was Donna’s last name?
Marosy:
Dukes.
Hellrigel:
That’s right. How long was she at IEEE, Donna Dukes?
Marosy:
She was there probably as long as I was.
Hellrigel:
She was the coworker that helped you with Fellows?
Marosy:
Yes. Not the entire time, but for the time she came, I was still down in Corporate Activities. So, she was probably with Fellows for maybe eighteen years.
Hellrigel:
So, there’s continuity.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
That’s important because it is a complex process. Before we talk about maybe some of the easier people or some of the people you’ve worked with long-term, we briefly spoke before we started that you oversaw the automation or the digitization. Modern is relative, but you went from paper to computer-based work.
Marosy:
That’s true.
Hellrigel:
Would you like to add anything or comment on the challenges, and how’d you figure out how to make it work?
Marosy:
When I first started everything was paper, so nominations, references, endorsements, all would be submitted by mail, or they even accepted faxes, which was crazy.
Hellrigel:
Especially at the time of the deadline, you probably had the fax machine rolling down the - -.
Marosy:
It was crazy, and then you couldn’t read some of the faxes, and then what do you do? They also allowed them to reuse reference forms for the past three years, so they had files downstairs in Corporate Activities of nominations for three years’ worth, and somebody would send in a nomination and say, can you use the reference? It was crazy. But at the time we’d get about 200, 250 nominations for the entire year. But you had to make copies, so think about all the paperwork. You’d have to make copies, because you’d now have to send it out to forty-six different societies, and then you had to make another set because you had to give it to the Fellow Committee so that they would do their review. So, it seemed like all you were doing was making copies of the originals.
Hellrigel:
Did you do that in-house?
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
You were just there like day [crosstalk]?
Marosy:
Inhouse. For a while we did send it out. We used--I don’t think it was Consumer Graphics. I can’t remember the name, but they would make like books for us. They would make these bound books so that it was easier to send out to folks when they did their review. So, all these members on the societies or on the Fellow Committee would receive them.
Hellrigel:
So, you not only had to do that, the cost of the photocopies, the cost of the mailing--
Marosy:
It was ridiculous.
Hellrigel:
Did you hire or pull in other people to help with the crazy [crosstalk]?
Marosy:
Yes, I used to hire somebody part-time just to open the mail. Think about all the mail that would come in, becausein because there were nominations, references, endorsements. The people would write and submit them from all over the world, and we’d get huge bins, and just have to have somebody open it and put it in different piles. You separate the nominations or references, and then you’d have to alphabetize them. Talk about a nightmare. So, that’s why for a while there I’d have two people reporting to me, because you just needed somebody to manually do some of this stuff.
Hellrigel:
This is 200 to 250. How did the number of nominations change over your twenty-four-year career?
Marosy:
As of today, we were getting 1,000.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Marosy:
Yes, it’s a big difference. I went and told Marybeth at the time, I said, this has to go electronic. So, I stepped down and I literally designed the nomination form and worked with IT, and we did it in phases so that the first phase was allowing people to submit their nominations online. The second phase was allowing the Societies to do their reviews. We had to do it, like I said, in phases. The next phase was allowing the Fellow Committee to do the nomination or their review online.
Hellrigel:
So, each year you would roll out another one to test it, to debug it.
Marosy:
Exactly.
Hellrigel:
Did you have nightmares if we tried to do it all at once electronically, it’s going to just blow up?
Marosy:
I’ll tell you, we sat down and at the time this was new for them, as well. So, I worked with Priscilla, she can remember, and we just thought it would be best just to do it in phases.
Hellrigel:
Awards, had they gone digital at this point?
Marosy:
No. They did not go digital until I had moved to MGA years later, like a decade or so later. They were way behind us.
Hellrigel:
Did you get any pushback?
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Who said we don’t want digitization?
Marosy:
I had volunteers. People would call me up and say I want to submit a nomination, and I said, you have to do it electronically now, we’re not accepting hard copies, and members were mad. They wanted to still submit, and I’ve had people threaten that they were going to fire me, get me in trouble.
Hellrigel:
Did you have the support from IT?
Marosy:
I did. Marybeth, she was supportive. Plus, I went to IT, but I also had the support, and I was able to get the money from an ex-president of IEEE. He happened to be on the Fellow Committee.
Hellrigel:
Who was that?
Marosy:
That was Tom Cain, and he actually got me the money, and he supported me 100 percent to continue moving forward.
Hellrigel:
That’s important to have a higher-ranking member.
Marosy:
Yes. I don’t know where the program would be at without his support.
Hellrigel:
So, this was pretty revolutionary too, the in-house, if Awards hasn’t done it yet.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
I remember even from being on the job market, I went through in my career from paper to submitting online, and even grants.
Marosy:
Sure.
Hellrigel:
It was so much easier when you didn’t have to run down to the post office by midnight and get everything stamped and sent on its way.
Marosy:
Yep.
Hellrigel:
When did you start to do this digitization? Around what year, if you can recall?
Marosy:
I would say it was probably around 2002, 2003.
Hellrigel:
Then it took a few years to, to roll out?
Marosy:
We rolled it out in multiple programs, in multiple systems, and then we actually converted everything into a new system which we had for a while, because some pieces were in Lotus Notes, some pieces were in some other program which I don’t even remember. So, we pulled everything together and were able to get it into Run My Process.
Hellrigel:
Now it’s a different one?
Marosy:
Right now it’s Run My Process. I think eventually that will change, but even with this new system that the board wanted us to incorporate, I think they’re going to stay with Run My Process probably for a couple years, but I think we’ll switch over.
Hellrigel:
Who decided to find this product? Because Run My Process is a product put out by some company.
Marosy:
IT.
Hellrigel:
So, they helped, because otherwise it’s hard to figure out what you might need.
Marosy:
I worked with IT years ago and said this is what we need, this is how it needs to function, and find some program that’ll work. A lot of it was customized.
Hellrigel:
How excited are you when you get it all digitized and you have your last batch of mail come in?
Marosy:
Thrilled. I had to go to the Board of Directors and tell them we need to increase the Fellow Committee, because at the time we only had twenty-four members. I felt that the number of nominations coming in would double, which it did.
Hellrigel:
Once you digitized, [crosstalk].
Marosy:
Just even the first phase. Once it allowed people to submit a nomination electronically, we received like 500 within the first year.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Fellow Committee
Marosy:
So, that increased the responsibilities for the Fellow Committee, so I knew we needed more members, and they granted me that, they gave me more Fellow Committee members. We were then able to put together a budget. I pushed for a lot of things.
Hellrigel:
What did the Fellow Committee expand to?
Marosy:
What it is today. There is fifty-two members.
Hellrigel:
Wow, that’s a large committee.
Marosy:
It’s the largest.
Hellrigel:
They have a lot of work. Then the Fellow Committee, did they meet face-to-face, virtually? How does that work?
Marosy:
They met just once a year face-to-face, and that was always around late September, early October.
Hellrigel:
Where did they meet? Did they meet at the 3 Park, [the 3 Park Avenue office]?
Marosy:
We used to meet in Newark, New Jersey for a few years, and the committee members wanted it to expand. We felt, okay, let’s try to rotate. So, we went to Europe, we’ve been to Hawaii, we’ve been to South America. We’ve expanded it.
Hellrigel:
So, you meet once per year in February?
Marosy:
No. Late September, early October.
Hellrigel:
How long is that meeting?
Marosy:
It’s only a few days.
Hellrigel:
During COVID, how did that function virtually?
Marosy:
It was interesting.
Hellrigel:
What do you mean by that?
Marosy:
Because we had to do everything through either Zoom or Webex, and it’s hard to have fifty-two people on a call or in groups of tens to review nominations. It’s okay when they’re doing their own personal review, but when you want to get together and kind of narrow down things.
Hellrigel:
Or if you have a vote between the hand-raising function or fifty-two postage-sized pictures, and how do you count who’s raising their hand or not.
Marosy:
Yes. We sat down and thought about how we could do it. But early on-- because the chair and the vice-chair never do a review, it’s just the fifty members--I felt, let’s have ten groups, five each group, and the people within the group looked at sixty or seventy nominations, and once I numbered the nominations I could tell easily what group they’re in based on the last number. So, if it was nomination number seventeen, I knew that was going to be in group seven. If it ended in a six, I knew it was in group six. That’s how I could easily identify where the nomination was, who was looking at it, at all times.
Hellrigel:
Do they do a lot of just prep work before they come to the three-day meeting?
Marosy:
Yes. What they do is they get nominations, they have about two months to do a review, and then they come together in late September, early October. At that point because they have to score these nominations. There are four different categories that they score them.
Hellrigel:
How do they score them?
Marosy:
Like I said, there’s four different categories. They use a scale from 1 to 100. Those scores get put into a scoring program [crosstalk] and then everybody gets ranked. Depending on where people rank, depending on each group, there’s a discussion sheet that I put together. So, there are specific things that the volunteers are looking at, and then they have their in-person - -. So, they kind of sit in each of their individual groups, they have their discussion, and then they come up with a final recommendation that’s given to the Board of Directors.
Hellrigel:
Is that usually civil?
Marosy:
Yes. Well, I made it civil, because my first year you had twenty-four of these volunteers that were in a room, and when they wanted to review people were just like raising their hand, it was crazy. So, I said, this is nuts, we can’t do it this way. When I had the twenty-four people, I only had five groups, roughly, but then when I expanded it, I put them all in groups, and yes, it was much more civil.
Hellrigel:
So, you reorganized how they functioned.
Marosy:
Yes.
Fellows Directory, website
Hellrigel:
You saw the shift, electronically. What else did you do for the Fellows program?
Marosy:
I designed the whole Fellows Directory.
Hellrigel:
What was there before the IEEE Fellows Directory online?
Marosy:
Online.
Hellrigel:
There was nothing online. There was the paper one before.
Marosy:
It was part of the Membership Directory. I don’t know if you remember that.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Marosy:
The books. So, I said we need to do something online where people could find references so that they could reach out to other fellows somehow, and so I designed that whole [IEEE] Fellow Directory.
Hellrigel:
How long ago was this?
Marosy:
When I first came up to MGA, so that was probably about twelve years ago.
Hellrigel:
Who did you work with to design that? Where’d you get some ideas for that?
Marosy:
Me, myself, and I.
Hellrigel:
Was that civil? [Laughter]
Marosy:
Was that civil? Yes.
Hellrigel:
I find it, [the IEEE Fellow Directory], very useful.
Marosy:
I think a lot of people do. I’m going to be honest; CJ (Cecelia Jankowski) thought it was a waste of my time.
Hellrigel:
Why?
Marosy:
I just said, well, I’m going to do this when I have some free time. I worked with a gentleman who’s not in IT anymore to help me find a program that could do what I wanted, and we did it together, but I pretty much came up with the whole design. I drew it on a piece of paper, and I said, okay, I wanted to do this, it needs to look like this, and it is what it is today.
Hellrigel:
Who is this gentleman?
Marosy:
Brian, and I can’t think of his last name. He’s no longer with IEEE.
Hellrigel:
So, CJ (Cecelia Jankowski) thought that people wouldn’t consult it?
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
And has she come to appreciate it now?
Marosy:
I think she’s changed her tune a little, yes.
Hellrigel:
When I’m trying to find background information, these days it’s the IEEE Fellow Directory and LinkedIn.
Marosy:
Yes, I can believe it.
Hellrigel:
Because often I’ll ask people for a résumé, and I never get one.
Marosy:
Now, think about all of them. I literally had to type in their citation and a lot of their information. I did that sort of as a side project.
Hellrigel:
So, that’s a major project as a side project.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Because I have access to Siebel, but it doesn’t always work, and it has information that I don’t really need. Like I don’t need somebody’s mailing address. [When I am doing research on potential oral history candidates, for the information I need the IEEE Fellows Directory is extremely useful.]
Marosy:
Right. The thing that I thought, and I still believe it’s necessary, you could look at somebody by Societies, by Region--
Hellrigel:
By sex. By elevation year. [If they are in Eta Kappa Nu. If they are deceased.]
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
When I was putting together the oral history project for Life Fellows, and people not knowing who’s a Fellow, well, this is a subset, and given that women became Fellows a little later, and just demographically, the Life Fellows, women are going to be even less represented because--
Marosy:
Exactly.
Hellrigel:
But it was easy to just do it, and for the most part people pick the sex, but even that’s a recent membership question.
Marosy:
Right.
Hellrigel:
Because I think that IEEE for a given always expected it to be male.
Marosy:
That’s true.
Hellrigel:
So, they didn’t ask that question, and it’s relatively recent that they’ve started to ask it. So, trying to get the numbers, sometimes they’re not possible. If someone would tell me how many women members were there in 1957 or 1947, I’m like, who knows.
Marosy:
No. I tell people now, it’s not really accurate because it’s not required when they join IEEE.
Hellrigel:
Right. There was only one person who was misidentified. Two years ago, they were identified as a woman but now they’re a male, and I think it was they either checked the wrong box, or their name. Sometimes international names--who knows?
Marosy:
I can tell you that there was someone that became a Fellow who had a sex change.
Hellrigel:
Yes, I know that person. But this other person, I think it was just they checked the wrong box. But the stats aren’t there, but that’s a helpful addition. It also helps with the regions and others, because when the members change over leadership every year too, they can use the [IEEE Fellows] Directory, as well as Siebel. But the Directory is always a quick response, and it doesn’t shut down as much as Siebel does.
Marosy:
Right. A lot of people have told me that it’s useful, so I’m glad.
Hellrigel:
Yes, and especially with the Societies and such, and then you could also filter out who’s a Fellow and who’s a Life Fellow. So, that’s helpful.
Marosy:
Exactly.
Hellrigel:
So, you’ve got the three major initiatives. Any other comments you’d like to make on any changes you’ve done?
Marosy:
Other than the website...
Hellrigel:
Yes, that’s a big project.
Marosy:
Right. We didn’t have the website years ago.
Hellrigel:
You helped design that, too?
Marosy:
Yes, with Leon. Yes, it was amazing. At the time you could literally write stuff that you wanted to go out on the web and all you had to do was press okay. It never was reviewed by anybody, and they took that away because of course you’ve got some people that were putting up stupid stuff.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes. Something that was stilted, the story that was [crosstalk].
Marosy:
Well, some stuff that was inappropriate.
Hellrigel:
Well, that too. So, who did you work with to develop the website?
Marosy:
It was again Marybeth [Denike]. It was something I knew they were allowing the different committees to have.
Hellrigel:
This was the Fellow Committee.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Now everybody expects to have a website.
Marosy:
It’s got good information, right? Because otherwise we were constantly getting calls for the same question. So, if you can refer them to the website...
Hellrigel:
That’s very helpful.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
What do you think now that you look back at your career? You’ve done a lot of computerization. You started with a manual typewriter, and moved to an electric typewriter, a word processor, a computer, and now you’re designing databases. The IEEE Fellows Directory is an online database.
Marosy:
Right. It’s interesting. I think that’s what kept me staying with Fellows, because it was changing, it was improving.
Hellrigel:
Did you have options? They tell us you drive your own career and other things out of HR. Did you have any inclination to jump to another OU?
Marosy:
I did. I applied, but to be honest, I always felt it was blocked.
Hellrigel:
Oh, okay.
Marosy:
I don’t know. Then I got to an age where there just wasn’t a need and I wasn’t going to make a lateral move, and I think years ago there weren’t as many jobs for the next level available. But again, I stayed with Fellows, I enjoyed working with the volunteers; that was probably 80 percent of my job. Every year it was a different committee, so I worked with thousands of volunteers, and volunteers that were part of the societies.
Working with volunteers
Hellrigel:
So, were there any memorable volunteers you’d like to single out?
Marosy:
Tom Cain, because he helped move the program along, he got the funds. There are some that I wish they were never part of the Fellow Committee, but I’m not going to say names.
Hellrigel:
No, not names. What made it difficult to work with a volunteer?
Marosy:
There were very few that I can say were difficult. I really found the volunteers--I really enjoyed working with them. They cooperated; we worked as a team most of the time. There was always a couple, but most of the time I really never had any major issues.
Hellrigel:
When you’re working there’s only you and one other person. When you go to the Fellow Committee, the face-to-face meeting, it’s just you and one other person?
Marosy:
Yes. We ran that whole committee.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Marosy:
They used to laugh, because I would try to keep everybody in line, and they used to joke like I was getting a whip out. But it was well organized. They knew where they were going, they knew their responsibilities, they’ve got the material that they needed.
Hellrigel:
Did you inherit it organized, or did you organize it more?
Marosy:
No, I organized it from day one.
Hellrigel:
Then you passed this off? I guess Jennifer worked with you this year?
Marosy:
Last year she saw how I ran the face-to-face meeting, and it was interesting because early on she was working with me many years ago before she left to raise her family. So, she remembered and saw all the changes, and thought it was just fascinating how much it had grown.
Hellrigel:
Working out of MGA has been fine?
Marosy:
It’s fine, yes. I personally always felt it didn’t fit in because I--
Hellrigel:
[Crosstalk] More of an award.
Marosy:
Yes. But they looked at it as a grade. It was always a grade, and that was part of it. The thing is, is that the Fellow Committee reports to the IEEE Board, not the MGA board. So, I always felt and still belong down in Corporate Activities.
Hellrigel:
Maybe you would’ve stayed if [crosstalk] didn’t have a conflict with firm.
Marosy:
Yes, I believe so.
Hellrigel:
Do you think it’d ever move back?
Marosy:
I don’t know at this point, because we’ve been up here for twelve, thirteen years. At this point I’m not sure CJ (Cecelia Jankowski) would give it up.
Hellrigel:
Because that makes sense as a historian trying to figure out why things are in certain OUs, and this was one question I always had, because, okay, it’s a grade, but it’s an award.
Marosy:
People look at it as an award, an honor, right?
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Marosy:
They do, they don’t look at it as a grade.
Hellrigel:
Yes, okay.
Marosy:
Especially, that you have such a small percent the makeup of the membership.
Hellrigel:
Yes, and I guess legally it can’t be more than 10 percent.
Marosy:
Right now, there’s probably about 8,000 living Fellows.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Marosy:
Membership, the voting membership is probably close to half a million.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Marosy:
So, it’s a very small percent.
Hellrigel:
Yes, maybe 420,000. I found out something about the numbers by sitting in on the Membership Development meetings. Students don’t vote.
Marosy:
Right.
Hellrigel:
So, they’re not voting members. When you’re looking at this competition about which Sections [and Regions] are growing the most, we’ve got overall members and then we’ve got voting members. It is a lot more complex than just straight-up numbers.
Marosy:
Right, it’s just graduate students and up that vote.
Hellrigel:
Yes, because now with the regional reorganization--
Marosy:
Yes, that’ll be fun, but that won’t happen until 2028.
Hellrigel:
Right. I’m still waiting for a call to have another vote to bring it back, which won’t happen, because when you look at things, we got some of each in geographic regions, but they’re not culturally cohesive.
Marosy:
No, they’re totally mixed, right.
Hellrigel:
Yes, and there’s one in particular, [viewing it as an historian] that has colonialism slapped all over it. A couple of them. When it was originally decided we’re going to do this and do that [in terms of regional organization], you can see the diaspora, who left Europe, and where did they go for jobs. Then it’s like, okay, that should be Region 8.
Marosy:
Right.
Hellrigel:
Yes. I ask everybody the question when I interview them, where were you when you heard that you became an IEEE Fellow. It is just like where were you when you found out you were nominated for an Academy Award. Most people know exactly where they were.
Marosy:
Interesting.
Hellrigel:
Where they read the letter. Now it’s where I read the email.
Marosy:
Right.
Hellrigel:
But a few of them from the 1970s, and then someone even said, well, someone told me before I got the official notification.
Marosy:
That doesn’t surprise me. There’s always one person that’s got to leak stuff, right?
Hellrigel:
Right.
Marosy:
What I try to do also is, the various reports, like after the Fellow Committee does their review and everything gets ranked and there’s these various reports, and they see different stats. I purposefully did not put anybody’s name on it. That’s why the nominations would get numbered, so you only knew them sort of by a number, purposefully.
Hellrigel:
So, purposefully these are blind reviews.
Marosy:
Well, by some, because think about the people in that group. So, you have five people in that group that really only know the names of those nominations. If you’re in one of the other nine groups, you’re not looking at those nominations, so you really don’t know the names of people that were submitted. I always tried to cover it up. When we got a chair, I’ll say about five, six years ago, he decided to change that. He felt that everybody should see everybody’s nomination and know who was being nominated. I obviously had to change that, because physically, did this person expect to personally review 1,000 applications? No, I think he just felt, why are we hiding it. I always felt people do a fairer job when they’re just basing it on the contributions and they don’t know if it’s a male, female, or where they’re from. They’re basing it on the contributions that they made. So, I used to try not to--
Hellrigel:
Highlight the name.
Marosy:
Yes, but he felt differently. So, right now, that’s how it stands.
Hellrigel:
All the names are on everything as it goes through?
Marosy:
Some things I didn’t change because it was just too complex with IT. They at least got all the nominations, so they could download all the nominations, all the material that they wanted. Before that they could only download the nominations that they were reviewing, the sixty or seventy. Now they can download all thousand names and see exactly and read about anybody that they want.
Hellrigel:
So, this person is calling for more transparency. I don’t know what they would say, but it’s quite common to have blind reviews of things. How about the Board of Directors? Did they oversee the process? Did they vote yes, we want blind reviews?
Marosy:
No, they really never really got involved on how the process worked.
Hellrigel:
It’s fascinating. What do you think is the biggest change over your career at IEEE, nearly a quarter century?
Marosy:
Other than the whole thing went electronically, there were still the two main reviews. You still had the Societies; that didn’t change. Really, just electronically, going from paper to electronic was the big thing.
Hellrigel:
People must have been happy your budget dropped. I can’t even imagine what it would cost for the paper [and postage].
Marosy:
It dropped, but then it increased, because obviously when we added more people, they were paying now for their travel. When I first started there, they weren’t really paying for the volunteers to travel.
Hellrigel:
No? Something else had to pick up their travel expenses, or they came out of their own pocket?
Marosy:
I’m going to be honest; this is how they operated. If somebody asked if we were going to pay for their travel expense, we’d paid for it, but if somebody didn’t ask, we didn’t.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Marosy:
I said, I can’t operate that way, that’s not fair. I said, you need to cover everybody. So, that was another thing. Some of the way they ran things early on was not kosher.
Hellrigel:
Right, because that would be if you had inside information or if you were more outspoken, but if you were quiet then you were just expected to pay.
Marosy:
I think back, maybe years ago even before I started, a lot of the companies paid for their employees to travel, and I think that had changed. But I didn’t want to operate that way because I felt it was so dishonest.
Hellrigel:
Yes, there needed to be transparency on that.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
With fifty-two people, did you have to help them with their travel arrangements and all that?
Marosy:
No, I worked with meeting planning, and they pretty much sent out the registration, and people pretty much made their own airfare. I obviously took care of the hotel and any meals and stuff. They submitted their expense reports, and boy, that was a pain.
Hellrigel:
How come?
Marosy:
They would submit a hard copy. A lot of times I’d receive an envelope, because you needed the original receipts, so you’d get an envelope. Their expenses envelope was just stuffed with the receipts, and then I would have to tape them onto pieces of paper and then make sure--
Hellrigel:
Here are the meals, here’s lodging, here’s travel.
Marosy:
Yes. So, today with Concur it’s a lot easier.
Hellrigel:
Yes, but that can change, too.
Marosy:
Sure.
Hellrigel:
Did you mind traveling?
Marosy:
No, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed meeting the volunteers. It was a nice little break. But again, it was really being able to see people face-to-face and meet them.
Hellrigel:
You would travel once a year for the Fellow Committee?
Marosy:
For the Fellow Committee, I did attend. I used to do some speeches throughout the Region meetings to promote the Fellows Program. I would attend the Board of Directors meetings.
Hellrigel:
To give them the report? Board of Directors, you had to present a report?
Marosy:
Well, I did it. It was really more to support the Fellow Chair if they were doing a presentation to the Board, and so forth.
Hellrigel:
Did you ever have to go to Sections Congress?
Marosy:
Yes, I did.
Hellrigel:
Are you going to miss that this year?
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Toronto.
Marosy:
Right. Again, that was interesting because it’s more focused on Region volunteers, so you got to meet more people that were involved in the Region versus Society.
Hellrigel:
Meeting with the regions, though, it, I did a couple. I went to Region 6 before COVID and it was nice to be in one place and meet all the people [the lead volunteers] in that Region. If you did ten, when you alternated it, in a few years you could’ve seen every Region.
Marosy:
Yes, exactly.
Hellrigel:
Maybe this was better than, say, going to a big technical conference and just having a paper that you delivered.
Marosy:
Yes. I did attend some conferences. Again, it was really to promote Fellows and stuff, pass out information on Fellows. So, over the years, I was able to attend, and like I said, do some presentations and so forth.
Hellrigel:
Who presents the Fellow their Fellow award?
Marosy:
Well, I changed that policy when I first started. When I first started, they sent the certificate out to somebody that was like sponsoring a particular conference. You’d find out where that newly elevated Fellow would want to receive their award, and then you would send out their certificate. So, a whole year’s worth, you’d have all these certificates just stacked, like in the office, which was bizarre. I said, if somebody doesn’t attend a conference until the end of the year, that means they’re not physically getting their award until maybe twelve months later. I said, that doesn’t make sense. I said, why can’t we just send the certificate directly to the newly elevated Fellow?
Hellrigel:
That was that big mailing you did a few months ago?
Marosy:
Exactly. Right. We did the certificate, we put a pin, and we mailed it directly to them. They can still be honored at, like, the Honors Ceremony at various conferences. People can still be recognized there, so I didn’t take that away, but at least it was easier to send them a certificate directly to them. We did it in one mailing over a couple weeks, and that was it.
Hellrigel:
This is a framed certificate?
Marosy:
Early on, it wasn’t, it was just a piece of paper, and I changed that. I was able to do it even cheaper where I was able to do the certificate, put it in a nice cherry frame, and they get their gold pin.
Feedback from recipients on Fellowship, artifacts, records
Hellrigel:
That’s pretty cool. Have you gotten any feedback about what the Fellow elevation grade means to people?
Marosy:
A lot, I think, especially if you work for academia. Number one, it’s an honor. That means that you could maybe get money for grants. Sometimes you can get elevated to full professor.
Hellrigel:
Yes, one gentleman said it makes you been seen that you’re honored by your direct peers because a lot would be Society-based, [or nominated through their Society].
Marosy:
Of course, sure. People will go after them for government jobs, maybe special projects. Industry doesn’t recognize it as much, but again, it’s important to folks. They still get excited.
Hellrigel:
Some in industry later in their career, they make the jump to academia.
Marosy:
A lot of them do. I’ve noticed ones that were on the Fellow Committee that worked in industry maybe a good portion of their life, then switched over to academia.
Hellrigel:
Cherif [Amirat] from IT, he’s actually taking a job at Stevens Institute of Technology to be an Industry Professor.
Marosy:
Good for him.
Hellrigel:
So, that’s pretty cool.
Marosy:
Right. I know that I’ve seen some of the plaques in people’s offices. I used to get requests all the time for a second certificate, and I had to start charging because people wanted to hang one maybe in their office at home--
Hellrigel:
One at work.
Marosy:
One at work. So, early on they used to do it for free, and I just said we’re not making money, we’re just breaking even, but at least it’ll pay for the costs.
Hellrigel:
What does it cost these days?
Marosy:
A frame and a certificate are like 100 bucks. The pins, too, a replacement pin is right now $100, because they’re ten karats.
Hellrigel:
I didn’t know that.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Marosy:
I had one gentleman, and he was like, why should I pay $100 when it’s a $4 pin? I said, no, this is ten karats. I said, I can’t help the fact gold keeps going up.
Hellrigel:
It’d be worse if it were platinum.
Marosy:
Right. But again, it’s not really to make money. It was like people would come in and say I need a pin for my blue suit, I want a pin for my brown suit. Years ago, they would pass it out, just send them as many as requested. I go, wait a minute, you don’t know what they’re doing with those pins. I said, I think if you put a cost on it, they’ll think twice.
Hellrigel:
We have some artifacts in the archive, and I was going through them finding things for a museum exhibit at IEEE’s 3 Park Avenue office. There are pins and tie clasps. There was a couple of years’ span with these beige ties. So, I asked Anthony Davies and some of the other guys I met at a Region 8 HISTELCON meeting in Glasgow in 2019 about them. I’m like, what’s with this with the beige neckties? A couple of their wives were around at the meeting. They are in their eighties, and one of the guys says beige goes with everything. I said, no, it doesn’t, and their wives laughed.
Marosy:
You think about the Fellow pin, it was really a tie tack, right, so how many women really wear a tie? I think many, many years ago I believed that if a woman became a Fellow, I think she actually got a charm.
Hellrigel:
Oh, I’d have to look into that.
Marosy:
Yes, I believe that.
Hellrigel:
Well, it could be, because, guys would always have their ties, and now dress is less formal.
Marosy:
Women had their business attire, too, right?
Hellrigel:
Yes, that’s interesting. I noticed at one of the last conferences I went to they had a message about attire, and basically it is business causal, but not too casual.
Marosy:
Right.
Hellrigel:
They would have the annual swag and it would be a tie and a women’s scarf. Most of the time the women’s scarf would have the IEEE blue in it, but then when I saw a couple of years of these beige ties, oh my. My late father did have a beige leisure suit, a beige like tan polyester kind of thing in the 1970s. My uncle had a lime green one that was really loud, and he had a sky blue one. So, beige, maybe goes with everything, but I don’t know.
In regard to the Fellows Program, that’s quite a bit of change. They must like the framed certificate and that it’s presented, and they don’t have to worry about framing it themselves. They put it on the wall, and it’s done.
Marosy:
Right.
Hellrigel:
It’s done for them.
Marosy:
Right, and we purposefully--I don’t know if you ever looked at one, but we outlined it in gold, so it’s distinct.
Hellrigel:
They look nice. I saw them when you were packaging them up. I saw all those boxes piled up.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
I was quite happy when we went out to Iron Mountain a few years back and reviewed the Fellow files. After reviewing them, I am waiting for them to be shipped to the IEEE Archive because they have such a wealth of biographical information.
Marosy:
Right, on the successful applications. The unsuccessful--
Hellrigel:
The unsuccessful applications were shredded back in the day?
Marosy:
Right, pretty much.
Hellrigel:
Now that things are electronic you digitally archive the successful ones?
Marosy:
IT is supposed to, yes. They have that.
Nomination and review
Hellrigel:
They’re corporate records, but there’s a great deal of biographical information that goes in there that could be useful. People can be nominated as many times as someone nominates them?
Marosy:
They can. I’d say 40 percent don’t make it on their first try.
Hellrigel:
Do you get anybody that knows they’re being nominated? At some point they have to know they are nominated?
Marosy:
I’m sure, because some of the questions that are on the nomination form, I’m not sure anybody could just answer them without having a conversation with the nominee.
Hellrigel:
Right. Have you ever had anybody try to lobby you to find someone to nominate them?
Marosy:
No.
Hellrigel:
Do you know of anyone that’s ever refused to accept being elevated to IEEE Fellow?
Marosy:
No, not that I’m aware of.
Hellrigel:
Did anyone ever send it back?
Marosy:
No. Again, not that I’m aware of.
Hellrigel:
Do you feel fairly content? How do you know when it’s time to retire, when you’ve had enough of the Fellows Program?
Marosy:
When it starts getting monotonous, and it was starting to get a little monotonous. Plus, just the change that the Board approved. Well, they just made it a little bit more complex.
Hellrigel:
By adding that extra level.
Marosy:
Yes, which I don’t think is necessary.
Hellrigel:
Yes, because that’s a whole other level of review.
Marosy:
Well, it’s a little complicated to explain. It’s just not necessary. Again, they’re just making it a lot more complicated. It’s not diverse, right? To me, the problem is if you’re looking for more nominations, say, from industry, then you need to go out and promote it in industry.
Hellrigel:
Right. It’s not like industry’s getting turned down
Marosy:
Exactly, and I always tell people, look, we don’t get as many nominations from industry as we do from academia, so the problem is you need to go out and promote it in industry. They talked about that for years and really didn’t do anything about it.
Hellrigel:
Right. I’ve seen that in the historical record, it would keep coming up. In so-and-so’s industry, and this battle between industry and academia. When you look at how few members vote in the elections, if industry wanted to take hold, let them all vote. Or this Region, or this Section could mobilize their members to vote. It’s very light on the voting side.
Marosy:
It’s a very, very small percentage.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Marosy:
Whether it’s for president, any of the positions.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Marosy:
Very, very low percentage, and I’m amazed. But I think it’s partly the way they advertise and promote it.
Hellrigel:
What does it mean? When I was at the ICASSP meeting in Rhodes, Greece s in early June, one gentleman said he works in industry and that unless he’s listed as author number one his company won’t pay for him to travel.
Marosy:
That’s interesting.
Hellrigel:
That’s another aspect of cutting back. Very early in my career when I was in academia and taught at university, you used to get funding to attend a couple of conferences and that would be only if you’re presenting a paper.
Marosy:
Right.
Hellrigel:
Then it was, no, only one conference a year.
Marosy:
Wow.
Retirement, travel
Hellrigel:
So, if you were presenting at more than one conference, you had to pay out of your pocket. Then funding was decreased again, and you were capped at a certain amount.
Now, engineers, probably because they have grants, have their funding, but I imagine it’s even cutting back there. That one gentleman was talking to his buddies about going to next year’s ICASSP, and he said it depends if he is first author for funding. So, the cutbacks, that’s a good point.
After almost a quarter of a century you decided that was that? Retirement became an option?
Marosy:
It is just retirement age, and I just want to not work. I figured I worked long enough.
Hellrigel:
So, what’s your game plan?
Marosy:
A little travel, just to kind of relax, and enjoy the grandkids, and just take one day at a time. I just want my health.
Hellrigel:
Right, that’s important. With the grandkids now you can make all their shows any time of day without worrying if it is after 4:00 or 5:00 P.M.
Marosy:
That’s the beauty of it.
Hellrigel:
Is there anything you would like to add that we didn’t cover?
Marosy:
No. We covered a lot of different things, but no.
Hellrigel:
Are you content, then, with your career?
Marosy:
I am. It worked out well for me. I’m certainly not going to complain. I think IEEE was a good company to work for and end up with. It got me to see places I never saw or would think I would’ve seen.
Hellrigel:
What are some of the fun places you got to see you never thought you’d go?
Marosy:
Australia. Hong Kong. Athens, Greece. Netherlands. Paris. Italy.
Hellrigel:
Before you took the job at IEEE had you traveled internationally?
Marosy:
Yes, I did for Prudential a little bit, mostly in state, but I did end up going to Bermuda. Mostly in state, but I’ve gone to Hawaii seven times.
Hellrigel:
Seven times. Wow.
Marosy:
So, there’s nothing to complain about. I’ve been to Costa Rica. Just a lot of different places. Part of it was the Fellow Chair, and they pretty much wanted me to promote their country or their state, and that’s how we really got to places.
Hellrigel:
So, the Fellow Chair would say maybe take off January for this meeting and say in September go to meeting X.
Marosy:
We would have a discussion. For example, the one gentleman was originally from Greece, and he had asked if there was a way. We do a cost analysis, and we ended up in Athens, Greece, and it was wonderful because he could promote his country, and the same thing with Italy. Hawaii, the reason we went there so frequently, was really a midpoint. It really was convenient for people especially from Asia, because I could easily have ten people that were from Tokyo or Hong Kong or whatever, and it was a reasonable flight for them. Plus, when I did a cost analysis, it actually would be cheaper than if I had the meeting in Boston.
Hellrigel:
Really?
Marosy:
Yes, it was amazing, because if you think about flights. I would stick to a particular budget, and I would say what we could afford per night. You did a cost analysis, and I would tell people, I would show them, look, I could get it a lot cheaper. Costa Rica was very reasonable, and it got people to Region 9. Depending on where we were, we would try to invite local Section folks to that meeting, or Region folks, or whatever. It was a way to promote the [IEEE] Fellow Program, and it worked out well.
Hellrigel:
Given international problems and relations, were there any places you were barred from traveling?
Marosy:
Yes, there are obviously places we wouldn’t think of going, but, no, over the years--
Hellrigel:
Did you ever have to cancel or move one?
Marosy:
We had to cancel it the one year because of 9/11 for obvious reasons. IEEE didn’t want folks to travel so close to when that happened, and COVID. Other than that, we were able to hold one every year.
Hellrigel:
The ICASSP (International Conference on Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing) the big IEEE Signal Processing Society conference was scheduled to be held in Hong Kong in 2002, but it was cancelled due to bird flu.
Marosy:
Oh, okay. One of our chairs was originally from Hong Kong, and that’s how we went out to Hong Kong.
Hellrigel:
When you cancelled for 9/11, how did you do it?
Marosy:
We had to do it by phone; not even Webex or Zoom. Literally, we had all these conference calls, and that was not easy. Even though we didn’t have a ton of nominations, that was before we had gone electronically, so we might have had maybe 250, 300 nominations, but still it took a lot of different phone calls.
Hellrigel:
You are not all in the same place, so you have to deal with the time differences.
Marosy:
Even today, we’re always considerate of folks that are on the committee that there’s a ten-hour difference, so we would have orientation calls, some early in the morning, some late at night. We made sure that it was convenient for them.
Hellrigel:
Did some of them want to work on weekends? Did you have to do things on a Saturday or a Sunday?
Marosy:
Well, our face-to-face meeting was pretty much over a weekend. It was always a Friday, and then kind of ended on a Sunday.
Hellrigel:
Due to the COVID-19 [pandemic], everybody came to a screeching halt.
Marosy:
Yes, and obviously we had some other calls we had to do during the week, but it’s hard, especially a good chunk of them would still work, so we’re trying to work around everybody’s schedule.
Hellrigel:
You had Webex at that point, so that was good.
Marosy:
Thank God, yes.
Hellrigel:
So, that’s a challenge. But some people like traveling. Since September and October, nowadays that’s peak, hurricane weather, did you ever have any cancellations? For example, one time there was an IEEE History Committee meeting we were supposed to have in Florida, and it was canceled because of a hurricane.
Marosy:
Well, it’s interesting. One year, the gentleman who was the chair wanted to have it in Florida, and I said I wouldn’t recommend it because that’s hurricane season.
Hellrigel:
That’s what I said.
Marosy:
So, he listened to me, and that week when we were in California, he’s like, I’m so glad I listened to you, because they were having one of the worst hurricanes that year. So, I’d never recommend it, I never would have a Fellow Committee primarily on the East Coast, or parts of the south because of the hurricane and around September, October. So, we’d either be in the middle of the country, like Chicago, or California, but never on the East Coast just because of the weather.
Hellrigel:
Did the fellows have a favorite spot?
Marosy:
Hawaii. I always got a fantastic turnout for Hawaii.
Hellrigel:
Yes, as opposed to New Brunswick and the Operations Center in Piscataway, New Jersey. Did you ever have them meet there?
Marosy:
Not for the Fellow Committee. It was always for the Board of Directors or something.
Hellrigel:
Yes, I kind of like that, - -.
Marosy:
It was okay.
Hellrigel:
It’s local. For staff it’s easier for schlepping displays and other stuff.
Marosy:
Absolutely. It was a bonus to be able to see some of these other countries and stuff, but I was fine with if we were local, too.
Reflections, closing remarks
Hellrigel:
Are you going to miss anything about your job?
Marosy:
Just working, I think, with the volunteers, the work itself. People have said do you miss it, and I’m going, well, it hasn’t been that long yet.
Hellrigel:
Yes, it’s early yet.
Marosy:
It’ll be different. It’ll be odd because I worked thirty years straight, so just to kind of walk away will seem odd.
Hellrigel:
Yes. I guess with the working at home a little bit more we kind of transitioned to that, so it’s less abrupt?
Marosy:
You’re right, and I think in that sense it made it a little bit easier for the transition because we were kind of working from home a few days and going in the office.
Hellrigel:
But it’s a new chapter, and you get to have fun with the grandkids.
Marosy:
It was just nice just waking up today and going, okay, what do I have to do? All right, I’ve got to go to physical therapy, and then I can do whatever I want.
Hellrigel:
Well, hopefully your health keeps you up and running.
Marosy:
Yes, I do, too. Thank you.
Hellrigel:
It was a pleasure that we crossed paths a little bit.
Marosy:
Yes, yes.
Hellrigel:
It was always fun. It was shocking when I saw all those boxes of successful Fellows applications at Iron Mountain. I was amazed, all these are biographies, great. Especially those who’ve passed, it’s hard to find information. Occasionally, we write articles and draft biographical entries for our history of technology Wiki, Engineering and Technology History Wiki (ETHW).
Marosy:
Yes, yes.
Hellrigel:
There are forty-plus boxes. I can’t remember off the top of my head. There was a mountain of boxes.
Marosy:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
When we do get that, hopefully we can hire an intern or part-timer to help create the entries, because so much is lost with each generation.
Marosy:
Right. Well, I think I had told you that there’s like a decade that’s missing, somehow. I don’t know where it went when they moved stuff from New York to Piscataway, and that was early on that I had asked Marybeth [Denike], I’m going, what happened, we’re missing a whole decade, and who knows where that went. I don’t know. When they moved stuff, they had it in Facilities...
Hellrigel:
Even at Iron Mountain, I was going through the different boxes there, and I said to the guys, these three boxes, they’re not IEEE. They were from a legal firm that got mixed in.
Marosy:
So, who knows?
Hellrigel:
They’re like, oh, yes, they’re coming in to look at that. So, someone pulled them and put them on a pallet, and then someone put IEEE stuff on a pallet, or whatever, but anyway, they were saved for the law firm. I’m saying to myself the boxes have a law firm’s name. It was like, no. I opened it, and I said, definitely, not IEEE material. The lawyers were actually coming in to look at stuff, so those guys were very happy because they were in a pile of things that other OUs and IEEE staff decided they were discarding. I looked at it and thought, I’ve got to say something, because these three boxes aren’t supposed to be on that pallet of IEEE material to destroy.
Marosy:
Right, sure.
Hellrigel:
It was wrapped up with “discard” written all around it, and it was like, no, I think these boxes got to go.
Marosy:
Get them to the right owner.
Hellrigel:
Yes, because I could just see a legal case get upended because it went to the shredder.
Marosy:
Yes. Well, I’m sure that decade, who knows where they’re at.
Hellrigel:
Yes, we’ll see, is there nothing else you want to discuss?
Marosy:
No, I’m good.
Hellrigel:
Okay. I appreciate learning about your life, and your great contribution at IEEE with the IEEE Fellows Program.
Marosy:
Thank you.
Hellrigel:
I wish you a very long and happy retirement.
Marosy:
Thank you. I wish you the same when that time comes.
Hellrigel:
Sooner rather than later.
Marosy:
I’m sure.
Hellrigel:
Thank you very much.
Marosy:
All right.
Hellrigel:
When I get this processed then I’ll send it to you for review and light editing.
Marosy:
Thank you. All right.
Hellrigel:
Thank you. Enjoy the summer.
Marosy:
I will. You, too. Bye.
Hellrigel:
Bye, Rosann.