Hall of Fame 2006
Charles Thompson
Class of 1980
A native of
Santa Cruz County, Charles Thompson was born in
1962 at the original Dominican
Hospital in Santa Cruz. Early on in his life, he and his mother,
Phyllis Thompson, moved to Watsonville. Charles attended H.A. Hyde and T.S.
MacQuiddy Elementary Schools, E.A. Hall Junior High School (it was not a middle
school at that time), then continued on to Watsonville High School to begin his
freshman year in 1976, graduating in
1980.
Charles tells us, "I can't say I was involved with too many clubs or
sports while I attended WHS, but I did concentrate on my studies and maintained
reasonable grades throughout my four years, emphasizing mathematics and science
coursework, while also taking my share of English and foreign language
classes." Prior to his senior year
at WHS, he spent a summer in Central America
and returned to school in September thinking he might want to travel after
graduation rather than continue on to college. However, he was accepted as an
electrical engineer into the College of
Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, so he decided to forego any
travel plans and go to school instead.
During his time at UCSB, he began to seriously ponder what he wanted to
do with the rest of his life. Ultimately he decided electrical engineering was
not his niche, so he moved from engineering to computer science. While he felt that computer was more to
his tastes, he still was not completely satisfied with the curriculum. He moved on to yet another major -
geography, with an emphasis on cartography and remote sensing. While he wasn't exactly sure what he
would do with a geography degree upon graduation, he felt he was at least
studying a subject in which he had a great deal of
interest.
In 1985, after graduation, fate intervened. Unbeknownst to Charles, his former
geography professor was contacted by someone at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena
regarding a position requiring skills in, believe it or not, cartography and
remote sensing. Within two weeks
Charles' career began at JPL. His
stay at JPL was a short one. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger
exploded. This tragedy affected his
tenure at the lab. JPL was forced to perform a "personnel reduction exercise"
and Charles was one of the first to go.
For the next five years he worked for an environmental engineering
firm. In June, 1990, fate again
intervened. JPL called to offer
Charles an extremely interesting position.
2006 marks his 16th year with the
lab.
Charles is a software developer at JPL. Most of his work involves the
development of applications and tools which are utilized by scientists for
analyzing and visualizing types of data acquired by satellites and other probes,
such as the rovers which are currently on the surface of Mars. His work is
varied and rarely is he on a project for more than 2-3 years. Charles feels very
fortunate to have this career and looks forward to the challenges ahead.
Charles never expected to be in the position he is today and in
retrospect, upon graduating from high school, he had no idea about what career
he wanted to pursue. It took him almost his entire college experience to really
figure out what interested him enough to consider it as a career. Because of that, the one suggestion he
has for any student who graduates from WHS without a clear idea of their career
path is not to fret. Sometimes it takes awhile to really figure out how to spend
a good portion of the rest of your life.
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