William P. Craft
Dean, Learning Resources and Technology
San Diego Mesa College
Instructor: CBTE 162
Welcome to Web Page Creation! I put this short bio together so that you could get to know a little about me. If we were meeting face-to-face, I would tell you most of this over the first few days of class. Since we are doing this online, I hope you like to read...
OK, here goes: I served in the United States Navy as an enlisted Photographic Intelligenceman from 1967 until 1971. Later, I left military service to attend Michigan State University, where I graduated in 1973 from the Honors College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography.
In 1974, I returned to the U.S. Navy as a commissioned officer and qualified in surface ships. Over the years I served in numerous seagoing assignments, including nine extended deployments to the Western Pacific and a tour as the Commanding Officer of USS Harry W. Hill (DD-986). Whenever I was assigned to positions in the Navy's shore establishment, I specialized in computers, communications, and satellite navigation systems. In 1991 I was designated as a proven subspecialist in Information Technology.
From 1995 until 1998, I served as Chair, Seamanship and Navigation Department, at the United States Naval Academy. In this assignment I directed the largest academic department at the academy and coordinated the summer at sea training activities for more that 1,200 midshipmen. I was promoted to the rank of Captain in 1996 and completed a Master of Arts in Liberal Arts (Great Books) degree from St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland in 1997.
From 1998 till 2001, I served as the Professor of Naval Science and Commanding Officer at the NROTC program at UC Berkeley. This program serves students attending UC Berkeley, Stanford University, UC Davis, and California Maritime Academy. In 2000 I was designated as a Microsoft Certified Professional. In 2001, I finally retired from the Navy after 31 years of service.
In 2001 I was appointed as Dean, School of Learning Resources and Technology at San Diego Mesa College. Originally I was only in charge of the Learning Resource Center, but over time I have taken on the responsibility for coordinating IT and Audiovisual for all of Mesa College, and for providing training and technical support for Mesa's Distance Education faculty.
OK, I have done a lot of things, but what do I know about the Internet and Web Design? Well, I have been involved in website development and design since 1998. I started with small websites at the Naval Academy and at U.C. Berkeley. Not the main sites for the school, just smaller sites for departments or special projects. (They were really primitive by today's measures--but, almost all websites were pretty "messy" back then.)
In 2003 I discovered the world of web standards; I found out that websites could be beautiful, fast, usable, and ADA compliant all at the same time. I was trained on several occasions by Molly Holschlag, including a three day seminar that she presented right here at Mesa College. In 2004, I qualified with the World Organization of Webmasters as a Certified Professional Webmaster and I completed a five-day intensive course on Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS-6).
The last three years have been really intense. For about six months I was the only person maintaining the Mesa College website. That was really fun, but, I still had my regular day job too <g>. Then I was lucky enough to hire Steve Manczuk as our full-time webmaster. However, I am still involved with the website on a daily basis.
Currently, my biggest project is to get support set up for Mesa's online instructors. We have a good system, but we want to make it even better. In the future we will be developing the ability to close caption locally produced videos and we will be making the college website even more interactive.
Well, that's about it. I am really looking forward to working with you this semester and I hope you will find that working on your own website is interesting--and a lot of fun! This course could start you on your way to a very interesting career or to a very satisfying hobby. Either way, it's worth the effort.