Judy Veranas - Faculty Candidate Talk

[Jerry]

A candidate for the open CS Faculty position will be visiting this Thursday. Her area of expertise is HCI, and she will be giving a talk on the classification of error messages.

The talk will be at 2:30 in EB 0011. Students attending will have an opportunity to meet with the candidate afterward.

Please attend, and then post your opinions here.

[Jason Vipond]

On the pro side - She was a really nice lady, and I liked her more after the presentation.  She seemed easy to talk to.  

On the con side - Her voice was very soft and hard to hear at times.  She had terrible color choices for her slides.  I think it a bit ironic that she's focused on HCI and I couldn't even read her slides.

[Ryan Lintker]

I agree that she made a better impression after the presentation when she talked with the students.  However, if the first part of her presentation was indicative of her teaching style, I don't know that I would particularly enjoy her class.  The slides were a disappointment, but I don't know how comfortable she is with slides, especially when she didn't even put them up at full screen.  That may indicate that she doesn't usually do things that way.

In her talk with the students she seemed really eager to teach us about software engineering rather than talk much about the school.  She seemed more at home drawing on the blackboard than she did with the powerpoint slides.  Considering her fields of expertise, (she said she was a physicist with a bit of a nuclear background, I bet those classes are taught with heavy blackboard usage) I can understand why she would use a blackboard more readily.

Overall, I think she did allright.  Not the greatest, but could be worse.  I wonder if gender is going to play a role in selecting the next faculty member, or if it can even be an issue?

[Stiffler]

Hmmm...soft voice, ay. Well we do need someone to fill Dr. Stephen's shoes.  :-P  

Jon

[Peter Motyka]

Not putting PowerPoint into fullscreen mode says something about the HCI aspects of PowerPoint.  If I remember properly, the few ways to put PowerPoint into fullscreen are: the tiny icon in the lower left hand corner, using the tool bar view->slide show or pressing F5.  Being primarily a presentation tool, you would think they would have a big freaking button outside of any menu that says "View Presentation Slide Show" to avoid the embarrasing moments I have seen many presenters have searching for the fullscreen mode.

Peter

[Victor Cardona]

I liked her. Although I think I would rather take a software engineering course from her then a HCI course. She did seem much more at ease after the presentation when she met with students.

Victor

[Guest]

If anyone out there can read this before its too late. This woman was teaching in Michigan and I had her for a software engineering class. She is terrible. DO NOT let her presentation fool you. When she teaches, she does not care about her students at all. She WILL NOT answer any questions and she will always be correct. Her requirements for her assignments are vague and you will not be able to follow them. Please...this is your warning. :-(  :-(

[Jerry]

The Department has already made the decision not to hire this faculty candidate.