I'm Scott Pinkston from Batesville, Arkansas. I have been the Director of Information Systems at Ozarka College since 1998.

Crazy from watching Platoon and growing up with G.I. Joes, I signed up for the U.S. Army National Guard at the tender age of 17. I was talked into joining and giving up the next two summers. My summer between junior and senior year of high school was spent lounging in Fort Benning, Ga going through boot camp. Came home, graduated high school and then went back to Fort Benning for advanced infantry school (11B MOS). Talk about having something to look forward to, it was like going to bootcamp twice.



Graduated HS, kicked around for a few months then decided to join the Navy. I was released from the Army National Guard and sent back to bootcamp for the U.S. Navy. That experience was drastically different from the Army bootcamp. No offense to the Navy, but it was really hard to take seriously after Ft. Benning.

Spent the next two years in electronics training. Orlando to Great Lake, IL then on to Fort Gordon in Augusta, GA and yes, I did get to attend the Masters in 1992.

My specialized training was in EHF/SHF Satellite Communications and the duties required a Top Secret SBI clearance. I spent a couple of years (1992 - early 1995) near Catania, Sicily (Italy) at the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station (NCTS Sicily) working in SATCOM before returning to the states for more training.

Left the Navy in 1998 and went to work at Ozarka College where I have had the fortune to have the freedom to try new things.

In addition to my normal IT duties, I'm responsible for developing the distance learning system called myOzarka that has been in use since 2001. myOzarka is the student and faculty's system for registration, billing, advising, course management, distance learning and everything else one would expect from a college's portal. Think Moodle/Sakai written in ColdFusion. ColdFusion is one little piece of my toolbox, although I will confess to it being my favorite. I was introduced to ColdFusion early in 1999 after a few years of thinking perl was the greatest thing around.

I have one son, Lance Christopher Pinkston, who was born on November 12, 2002.