University Professor Web Pages

This evening I browsed through the personal web sites of full-time faculty at the California State University at Sacramento (CSUS) and the University of California at Davis (UC-Davis).

As a first impression, the personal faculty web sites at both campuses scared the hell out of me.

The winners of best web sites, in my opinion:

• CSUS: Scott Gordon (http://gaia.ecs.csus.edu/~gordonvs/). Not only does the man have a 5.0 rating at RateMyProfessors.com, but he has a picture of himself at Pixar with Sulley and Mike from Monsters, Inc.. Nice.
• UC-Davis Computer Science Department: Dr. Kwan-Liu Ma's shining star atop the rubbage heap: (http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ma/)
• UC-Davis Computer Engineering Department: Dr. Richard A. Kiehl's inspiration: http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~rakiehl/. Professional picture, great layout.
  

Notables:

• Dr. "I'm above you in every way" Chong
• Please don't hurt me (from the UC-Davis Computer Engineering department)
• Dr. Charles "You're going to like the way you look; I guarantee it." Hunt (Men's Wearhouse)
  
• Dr. Demet "80's 4ever" Askoy (she has more current pictures--why not use them?)
• Dr. Matthew "bed hair" Bishop
• Dr. Bertram "don't make me use that giant laser-dish behind me" Ludäscher
• Dr. Phillip "don't get me started" Rogaway
• Dr. Zhendong "No, I expect you to die, Mr. Bond" Su
  

Profs that care:

• Dr. Zhi Ding, http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~zding/
• Dr. Soheil Ghiasi, http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~soheil/
• Dr. Brian Kolner, http://www.leorg.ucdavis.edu/
• Dr. John Owens, http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~jowens/
• Dr. Qing Zhao, http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~qzhao/
• Dr. Nina Amenta, http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~amenta/
• Dr. Hao Chen, http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hchen/
• Dr. Biswanath MukHerjee, http://networks.cs.ucdavis.edu/~mukherje/
• Dr. Oliver Staadt, http://graphics.cs.ucdavis.edu/~staadt/
• Dr. Du Zhang, http://gaia.ecs.csus.edu/~zhangd/

Fun:

• Dr. Prem Devanbu, http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~devanbu/
• Dr. Matthew Farrens, http://american.cs.ucdavis.edu/ArchLabPersonnel/Farrens/homepage.html

Oddities:

• Same pic, different views (1, 2)
  
• Weight changes
• Hair changes (1, 2), (1, 2), (1, 2),

What I liked: professional picture, clean layouts, pictures of the instructor with students

A point of irony: the CSUS department's 2006-2007 assessment report lists "Communication skills and interpersonal skills" as an essential skill on page two.

A second point of irony: UC-Davis has six people (other than Dr. Staadt and Dr. Ma) whose stated interests involve computer graphics, animation, or visualization: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6--yet their web sites remain woefully primitive, in my opinion.

The serious takeaway: It's all-too-easy to mock people's weaknesses, and I hope this attempt at humor comes across as just that--these people are probably all outstanding in their fields (no pun intended), great people, and great instructors. Yet, if faculty fail to communicate clearly using the most widely available medium available to them, how can we inspire students to do so? This isn't a new phenomenon--the CS faculty web pages of my alma-mater haven't improved that much since I graduated in 2000 (even the resident computer animation expert).