Watching Chesapeake Computer Consultant-Instructor Steve Pearson in front of a classroom or behind a computer, you would think that technology is his lifelong passion. Although router configurations and network support come easy for him, his introduction to computers wasn't necessarily "love at first sight."
Steve remembers spending many hours struggling with the computer in
college. "Once I spent two weeks trying to figure out a problem with a
Fortran program I had written," reminisces Steve. "The program had been
rejected because I had put a decimal point in the wrong place.
Unfortunately, this early experience didn't give me a positive start with
computers."
His tune changed in the 1980s. In 1987, Steve joined the Private Sector Counsel (PSC), a nonprofit group supported by chief financial officers of Fortune 500 companies. "The intent of this nonprofit," explains Steve, "was to bring the government's agencies up to speed on modern, corporate financial techniques. The objective evolved when technological projects were added to the mix." Steve's role at PSC was as a program manager, but he also ran the computer network -- an area he wanted to spend more time in.
Successive positions provided him with more opportunities to hone his computer skills. In 1989, Steve joined CACI, and Arlington, Virginia, computer company that writes software for government agencies. at CACI, Steve worked on an Electronic Data Interchange Project and trained to become an UNIX systems administrator.
Next, Steve ran a Novell network for Group Health Association, an HMO in Washington, D.C. He then worked for Management Systems Applications, where he became a dedicated on-site contractor for the Department of Health and Human Services. In this position, Steve was one of the network engineers running a nationwide Banyan VINES and TCP/IP network, connecting up to ten thousand personal compuers and 250 servers. (In the Banyan VINES operating system, he specialized in StreetTalk and StreetTalk Directory Assistance issues.) Steve also provided TCP/IP, WAN, and Cisco Router support, culminating in ROM hardware and Cisco IOS software upgrades on all routers in the network. (A job he completed in five weeks.)
Steve came to work for Chesapeake in 1995. "I had taken some classes at Chesapeake and thought very highly of the company," he says. "Plus, everyone I met who worked there was technically outstanding." Steve was hired as a consultant-instructor and finds the combination of roles enjoyable. "The two positions are synergistic," he explains. "Teaching forces you to stay current with the changes in the Cisco hardware and software. On the other hand, consulting enables you to bring real-world experience to the classroom. That's what I like about the mix."
Steve typically spends one to two weeks of every month in the classroom. He teaches classes at Chesapeake's headquarters in Annapolis and up and down the East Coast. Initially, Steve had some trepidation about becoming an instructor, as his background was technological rather than instructional. "But I found it was easy," he admits, "to talk about topics with which I was technically comfortable and about which I was enthusiastic." Steve is certified to teach ICRC and will probably teach ACRC in the near future. He is also becoming certified to teach CiscoWorks.
Steve spends the rest of the month consulting. He has implemented an ISN Dial-on-Demand solution for remote offices of a major government agency, and configured a Cisco router-based ISDN WAN linking IP/IPX networks in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Recently he helped install and troubleshoot a Frame Relay implementation for an ISP. Perhaps Steve's favorite Chesapeake consulting job is the one he is currently working on for an aerospace engineering company. "I'm doing consulting on a very large OSPF implementation and find it to be a lot of fun," he says. "I'm learning how the 'guts' of the protocol behave."
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