Employee Spotlight: Charlie Hairston


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Charlie discovers fire.
As OIT's Database Technician, Charlie Hairston juggles documents. In his spare time he juggles flaming batons.

The primary focus of Charlie's job at OIT is the processing of IFAS documents into electronic format. He also handles the menus for the EDIS Web Site and helps edit and update pages for UF/IFAS Office of Information Technologies' Web Site. He helped organize the 7th International Conference on Computers in Agriculture. In addition, he edited the printed proceedings and organized the resulting CD-ROM. He is working with others at OIT developing an experimental cataloging scheme for documents and images based on some of the cataloging relationships developed in Anthropology (see below).

A native Floridian, Charlie was born just down the hill from OIT's offices at Shands and grew up in Jacksonville Beach. He started at UF on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, majoring in Architecture before changing his major to Anthropology. His computer skills are considerable.

Charlie, whose brother ran away and joined a circus school, took up juggling about three years ago. He is one of the founding fathers of the UF Ultimate Freestyle Juggling Club who often meet during lunch hour on campus to throw things at each other.

During the summer of 1997 he attended the Archaeology Field School in Panama, run by UF Assistant Professor Dr. Lynette Norr. The field work was done at Zapotal, a 3–4000-year-old site on the Azuero Peninsula. They were based in the small town of París, Herrera, Panama where they shared small, cinder block houses with a variety of mosquitos, moths and lizards. The site they were studying contained numerous pottery fragments with anthropomorphic and geometric designs.

We consider Charlie a valuable addition to our crew here at Information Technologies. He's a hard worker and his cheerful disposition has defused more than one tense situation. It's hard to be grumpy when he walks through the office juggling oranges.




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Last modified February 22, 1999