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People's Choice Awards
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People's Choice: Red Carpet
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People's Choice: Backstage
Miami professor grabs Yahoo! Answers honors
Friday, March 23, 2007
Oxford resident Lisa Poirier recently became one of 25 people honored as Yahoo! Answers top answerers.
Poirier works at Miami University as assistant professor and director of graduate studies, and uses both her expertise and research skills to answer inquiries in the category of Education and Reference.
Extras
Answering more than 1,100 questions, Poirier has a good reputation, with 80 percent of her responses being voted as "best answer" by the Yahoo! Answers community.
On the Yahoo! Web site, there is a function where anyone can pose a question and receive a response from people with expertise on the question. According to Time magazine, there are more than 160 million users worldwide and 200 million answers.
"I've become a little addicted to answer questions,"
said Poirier. " I view it as a hobby and will spend two seconds answering a question or have to research the question for a longer time in the evenings."
Poirier splits her time between her job, answering questions on the site, and working on her book about 17th century native France, which she hopes to be published next year.
"This semester I spend at least eight hours a day working on the book, when I'm not answering questions," she said with enthusiasm.
The award is already gaining Poirier more attention than she had ever bargained for. The LA Times and Newsweek have already called for interviews. However, she thinks of it as a "stupid little hobby" and says it is a way to give back to the community.
"It allows students — especially those who want to ask a question and are too embarrassed to ask professors — to open up," she said. "Sometimes, these students just don't know where to look."
Recently, a graduate student talked about how devastating it was to be under appreciated and underpaid, and asked how to gain more self-worth on the Yahoo! Answers Web site.
As the director of graduate studies in the comparative religion program, she understood what he was going through. Poirier responded by explaining that she understood that it was a thankless job that sucked up huge amounts of time, and gave him a few encouraging words.
With her sympathy, expertise and devotion to answering questions, Poirier definitely deserved a little vacation to California to receive the award.
"It was fantastic being terribly fussed over," said Poirier. "They gave us trophies, and a cocktail party."
The giving spirit wasn't amiss at this soirée. That same weekend, the winners went to a high school in San Jose to rehabilitate a garden used by science students.
"The rest of the time was swanky, but I'm glad a part of my time there was used to demonstrate my intentions to help the community," she said.
