With his resonating voice and pronounced gestures, Chesapeake
Computer Consultant-Instructor Glenn Tapley is a natural
in front of a classroom. ICRC and Frame Relay students
are in for a real treat when they take a class from this professionally
trained, former actor. "My students quickly learn not to
be surprised when I break out in iambic pentameter or wax Shakespearian,"
says Glenn. "I'll do whatever needs to be done to make a
subject engaging. My greatest reward in teaching is when the little
light goes off in my students' eyes and I know they finally understand.
That's what's important."
Ironically, Glenn had considered a career as a computer consultant for years -- but continually rejected the idea because he thought it had no promise as a full-time career. "I actually believed that acting had a better future than computers," he laughs.
He was first introduced to computers in college. "This was in 1975 and the college computer used 80-column key punch cards," reminisces Glenn. "You had to type one line of instruction on to each card, then insert the stack into the computer at the same time and in the correct order." Because Glenn was majoring in theater, he thought playing with the computer was "a great game" and nothing more.
But after a couple of years of "treading the boards," Glenn decided acting wasn't all it was cracked up to be. He returned to college to pursue his graduate degree in business administration and public communications at the University of Denver. While at Denver, he worked for the College for Financial Planning, helping to write study guides and grade tests. "At this time, a friend of mine let me use a mini-computer he had in his basement. This was my first exposure to TCP/IP. I toyed around with the unit and loved it, but once again, questioned a career in computers and walked away from it."
Computers returned to Glenn's life in 1985, when he moved East and worked for a national insurance firm. "One of my collateral duties," he recalls, "was to evaluate the use of computers by field personnel. I carried a suitcase with a Toshiba computer and dual floppy drives." At this time, he also worked as an investment broker. "In 1988," he remembers, "I started to use dialup services to my home office to retrieve information for my clients. Once again, this piqued my interest in computers."
In 1993, he started his own business as a marketing/communications trainer and consultant. One job involved writing a business plan to develop an Internet Service Provider (ISP) for Central Florida. As part of the plan, Glenn did a regression analysis and realized how big the Internet was going to be -- and recommended that it would not be a prudent investment because of large start-up costs and a lot of competition. Glenn's prediction about the Internet and its impact proved to be true. Today, there are 20 ISPs in Orlando alone and none are profitable.
In 1995, Glenn finally turned his full attention to the computer industry and became a TCP/IP instructor for a large training organization. A year later, he was contacted by Chesapeake.
"Although I liked what I was doing and wasn't looking to move," explains Glenn, "Chesapeake offered me the chance to develop professionally, far beyond anything I could have imagined. The organization gave me the opportunity to combine training and consulting -- and no one else does that!"
Glenn cites one example of how valuable this real-world experience can be. When teaching a recent ICRC class, students from a large state agency told him about their network's connectivity problems. Since the agency was located just three blocks away, Glenn went over with them at lunch time to check it out. He isolated a problem in their access lists and fixed it on the spot. "Bringing real-world experience to the classroom -- and vice versa -- really pumps me up," admits Glenn. "One helps the other so well."
In addition to loving his work, Glenn has great respect for his co-workers. "The quality of the expertise from a technical standpoint, combined with the compassion of the people from a human standpoint, make working at Chesapeake like nothing else in the world. You could not blast me out of here with a stick of dynamite!" To Glenn, it means he has finally found his stage.
Copyright © Chesapeake 1997