Charles J. Eckard

Courses

• Spring 2024
• Summer 2024

Personal Statement

I was born in Seattle and raised in Bellevue, back when it was a relatively sleepy bedroom community. I graduated from Sammamish High School, class of '79.

At seventeen I landed my first real job, with a test equipment calibration lab in Redmond, where I received more practical experience about electronics than I did during all of my college years. 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. Upon my first graduation from WSU, I was with Boeing for nearly eight years, most of them in Flight Test Engineering, located on the west side of Boeing Field. I had some great experiences there, but also too much idle time and a lack of challenges, which prompted me to return to WSU at age 30 to earn an MBA.

In between those school years, I studied for hours virtually every night for several months to take the Washington State Professional Engineer exam, a process initiated by the engineering professors in Pullman. (All of that studying paid off: I passed on the first attempt!)

In 1994 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 newly-minted MBAs assisted experienced business people to help developing countries learn the ways of capitalism. Thus, I spent the summer in Romania, which was my first (and to this date only) time abroad. To say the months spent there was an eye-opening experience for me would be a serious understatement. And, yes, I’ve been to Transylvania and inside Vlad the Impaler’s castle, which incidentally looks nothing like what Hollywood embraces in Dracula movies.

Upon my return to the States, except for some part time work I was unemployed for the better part of a year. This changed in June 1995, when I was hired as an electronics instructor at another school. Tim Fiegenbaum (also of this department) came to work there the year after I did, but wisely left for North after a couple of years. I became the next full-time electronics hire, sixteen years later.

I have been at North since 2014, and was awarded tenure in 2017. In 2020 I will have been teaching for 25 years (has it really been that long?!).

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 classic and progressive rock; 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 the course of over two decades, I'm sure I've learned as much from my students as they have from me.

Go Cougs!

Degrees & Certificates

BSEE, MBA