Charle Will Spend Time With Teams

Instructor in Management Information Systems Jean Charle working with a student.

Jean Charle, instructor in management information systems who retires this summer, is looking forward to spending more time with her favorite baseball and basketball teams.

And no wonder the "teams" are composed entirely of her grandchildren. "I have enough grandchildren for a baseball team of boys and a basketball team of girls, and they will be an important part of my retirement," says Charle, who joined the College of Business Administration faculty in 1984 and played a key role in forming the college's innovative program in introductory computer instruction.

Charle and her husband, Ed (chairman of the Economics Department), have six children, of whom five are married (the youngest attends Ohio University). And, with her own children residing across the United States and beyond, Charle will have to do a little traveling to keep up with her "teams" of grandchildren.

"One of my daughters is moving soon to Argentina, and I'm kind of excited about the opportunity to visit there," she says, noting that her other children live in Chicago, New Hampshire, Boston and The Plains, near Athens. Although Argentina may be new to Charle, travel abroad won't be.

"One of the important and rewarding aspects of our association with Ohio University has been the opportunity to travel. My favorite places were in Africa, as it was when we lived there 20 years ago, and the South Pacific, but I've learned a great deal from everywhere we've been," she says.

Charle's opportunities to live abroad came through her husband's work for the University. After joining the faculty in 1958, he accepted a four-year position with the University-U.S. AID teacher-training project in Nigeria, where Jean taught in the public school. The assignment was the first of many that over the years took Charle to several African nations, the South Pacific and the Caribbean.

"Aside from visiting our family, we don't have any plans for travel, but that could change after Ed retires," she says, remarking "I'm not sure when that will be."

In the meantime, Charle plans to take some courses she's "toying with the idea" of perhaps pursuing a master's degree in environmental studies and to continue her daily swim at the University's Aquatic Center. In addition, she and her husband have a log cabin in the woods near Logan that has become a second home for most of the summer and weekends in the spring and fall.

Charle joined the University faculty in 1976, when she began the Day Living Center, a daycare center for senior citizens. After five years, she returned to school and earned an M.B.A. from the college in 1981 (she also holds an A.B. degree in sociology from Washington University). Then while with her husband on a project in Jamaica, Charle began working with personal computers. A year later, she began to teach for the college.

"I've loved working with the students, seeing them learn how to apply computers to their other business courses. I really will miss the teaching," she says. One suspects, however, that some of that teaching talent will get translated into "coaching" those special teams in her life.

CBA Inventory - Spring 1990