Charles Eckard

Courses

• Winter 2026
• Spring 2026

Personal Statement

I was born in Seattle and raised in Bellevue, back when it was a relatively sleepy bedroom community, attended and graduated from Sammamish High School—which has since undergone a massive transformation.

At seventeen I landed my first real job, at a test equipment calibration lab in Redmond, where I received more practical experience about electronics than I did in any of my college courses. I worked there throughout my last year of high school and during summers prior to receiving my BSEE degree.

I’m a Coug, twice over. Following my first graduation from WSU, I worked at Boeing for nearly eight years, most of them in Flight Test Engineering. I had some great experiences there, but also too much idle time and a lack of challenges, which prompted me to return to WSU to earn an MBA.

In between those college years, I completed the process, initiated by my professors at WSU, to become certified as a Professional Engineer, in case you’re wondering what the “P.E.” means after my name.

I was honored to have been selected to participate in an international business-oriented internship the summer following the completion of my master’s program. Working with Washington’s Small Business Development Centers, several recent MBA grads assisted experienced businesspeople to help developing countries learn the ways of capitalism. Thus, I spent the summer of 1994 in Romania, which was my first (and only) time overseas. To say the months spent there was an eye-opening experience would be a serious understatement. And, yes, I’ve been to Transylvania, which incidentally looks nothing like what Hollywood embraces in Dracula movies.

Upon my return to the States, I was “marginally employed” for the better part of a year. Part-time work I found varied from packing stuffed animals into boxes, to assisting UPS during the holidays (I even handed a package to Seattle Mariners right-fielder Jay Buhner!), to late-night sewer system flow analysis (believe it or not, that one was my favorite), to logging maintenance data for King County’s Metro Transit buses. This changed in June 1995, when I was hired as an electronics instructor by another college, where I remained for almost twenty years. I joined North in 2014 and was awarded tenure in 2017.

Hobbies? I enjoy restoring old (especially tube-type) radios and related gear (there’s a special place in my heart for vintage test equipment, too), reading (mostly non-fiction), and listening to music of many genres (especially progressive rock and “deep cuts”; but go light on the country, and no hip-hop, please). Of course, sharing my passion for electronics with those who are interested is near the top of my list. And through this course of over 30 years, I’m sure I’ve learned as much from my students as they have from me.

Go Cougs!

Degrees & Certificates

BSEE, MBA