Earl has over 30 years of work experience helping universities across the United States become more efficient and user-friendly. For a specific look at Earl's credentials, visit his resume.
Earl received an Academic Scholarship from the UF Alumni Association and attended the University of Florida where he graduated in 1971. He also did a year and a half in Graduate School in Math Education before he was hired as a Programmer Trainee in the Office of the University Registrar in 1974.
In 1983, he spent two years as a Systems Programmer at the Northeast Regional Data Center, and in 1985 he was asked to return to the OUR in order to become the Director of their programming shop. He remained there until 1999 when he was offered the job of Chief Information Officer at the University of Florida.
In 2001, he became Vice President for Applications at Shands Hospital. In 2003, he returned to UF as Director of University Computing and remained there until 2009, at which time he retired and received the University Medallion for meritorious service.
During his career, Earl received two software patents, invented EAGLE, was the father of FACTS.org, created ISIS (the UF Student System), and was instrumental in creating ISISAdmin for University staff. At Shands, Earl led a hand-picked team that installed MEDIC, which is an EAGLE portal.
Earl created and implemented the management strategy known as Mellow Submarine for which he has published a number of articles with AACRAO SEM and made many presentations.
He was also a member of the Board of Directors for CUMREC, a national higher education conference, and he was the general chair of the CUMREC conference held in Orlando in 2003.
Earl founded his own idea-sharing conference based in higher education called the KnowIT Conference, now in its 5th year.
Earl has served as a computer consultant for several different universities and worked with JTC Associates of Nashville in that capacity as Vice-President for Higher Education.