Charles is a Clinical Associate Professor and teaches in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He also works with the IMS Global Learning Consortium promoting and developing standards for teaching and learning technology. He also works for Longsight as Sakai Chief Strategist. Previously he was the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation and the Chief Architect of the Sakai Project.

Charles teaches two popular MOOCs to students worldwide on the Coursera platform: Internet History, Technology, and Security and Programming for Everybody and is a long-time advocate of open educational resources to empower teachers.

Charles is the editor of the Computing Conversations column in IEEE Computer magazine that features a monthly article and video interview of a computing pioneer. Charles is the author of the book, "Sakai: Building an Open Source Community" that describes the early days of the open source Sakai project. Charles is also the author of the book, "Using Google App Engine" from O'Reilly and Associates and the book "Python for Informatics: Exploring Information". He also wrote the O'Reilly book titled, "High Performance Computing". Charles has a background in standards including serving as the vice-chair for the IEEE Posix P1003 standards effort and edited the Standards Column in IEEE Computer Magazine from 1995-1999.

Charles is active in media as a hobby, he has co-hosted several television shows including "Nothin but Net" produced by MediaOne and a nationally televised program about the Internet called "Internet:TCI". Charles appeared for over 10 years as an expert on Internet and Technology as a co-host of a live call-in radio program on the local Public Radio affiliate (www.wkar.org).

Chuck's hobbies include off-road motorcycle riding, karaoke and playing hockey.

Charles has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Michigan State University.