Tim Pearson

The easiest way to reach me is to drop an e-mail to: tpearson at this domain (timothympearson.com).  I check my in-box often and will do my best to get back with you quickly.

Timothy Morgan Pearson was born in Webb City, Missouri in 1958.

He graduated from Webb City High School in 1976. In 1977, Pearson was awarded a Reagent’s Scholarship to MSSU. During his time as a student, Pearson worked as the Systems Programmer in the Department of Computer Science. In 1980, Pearson received the Outstanding Student in Computer Science award from MSSU. Prior to graduation in 1981, he began teaching seminars on Transaction Driven Processing under the auspices of Dr. John Cragin, academic head of the Department of Computer Science. Pearson graduated from Missouri Southern State University in 1981 with undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science.

From 1981 through 1987, Pearson was a member of the adjunct faculty in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at MSSU.

Beginning in 1981, Pearson was employed as the Director of New Technologies for Midwestern Telephone. In 1985, he became CIO for the firm. He served in that capacity for over 20 years until he retired from the firm in 2007. During his time at Midwestern Telephone, Pearson worked with IBM engineers on systems development for the IBM Series/1 minicomputer. During this time, he was published in Computerworld Magazine on the topic of the IBM Series/1 and its operating systems.

In April of 2008, Pearson joined the staff in the Office of Information Services  (now Information Technology Services) at Pittsburg State University. He served as the Unix Systems Administrator for three years prior to being named Interim Assistant Director in 2011 and later became an Assistant Director, and then Director on a permanent basis.

Pearson has also served as a volunteer firefighter for over 35 years. The last 20 of those as the Fire Chief of the Carterville, Missouri Fire Department.

Pearson is currently the Director for IT Infrastructure and Security at Pittsburg State University. He has completed the successful design and deployment of an updated virtual infrastructure and distributed, software defined storage system leveraging hardware from HPE, virtualization hypervisors from VMWare, and distributed, software defined storage from Commvault.  With the new infrastructure in place, PSU has the benefit of  “Equal or Better Than Cloud” levels of survivability, resource distribution, and geographic diversity… but at a fraction of the cost of rented, public cloud services.  PSU’s total outlay for this solution was less than the cost of renting public Cloud horsepower – for just one year.  The “private cloud” solution can be easily expanded, already has lasted long past it’s 1-year “break even” point, and should last for years to come.

Pearson has also completed a successful deployment for desktop virtualization.  The project provides standard and graphics hardware accelerated virtual desktops and, using a dedicated farm,  provides virtualized CAD workstations for  to remotely located students for the College of Technology – in each case, eliminating the need for students to travel to the university to access resources in a physical computer lab.

Pearson also spearheaded a new initiative at PSU – designed to augment and largely replace desktop virtualization as the venue for student access to specialty applications.  The new tech, offered by a firm called Software2, allows students to “install” packaged versions of specialty apps on their own devices but allows the university to retain license control.  This technology shifts the “horsepower” to the student’s device and away from the datacenter.  The same tech can be used to turn general purpose computer labs into specialty labs and vice versa.

Pearson is currently overseeing the replacement of the university’s circa 1990 telephone system with a more modern system providing seamless remote access to voice communications from remote locations.  The ability for faculty and staff to take their “work phones” home during the COVID pandemic was identified as a gap in remote telework capability.  The new phone system will close that gap – making physical location largely irrelevant for many employees when it comes to I.T. and Telecom services.

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