EJ Westlake wants to see "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," enjoys growing vegetables and is a second cousin to gay porn legend Leo Ford. Westlake is also an assistant professor in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. All this information is available thanks to Westlake's Facebook.com profile.

That Westlake, a professor who is at least too old to claim membership to the online generation, has a Facebook profile isn't unusual. Ever since September 2006, when the previously college-student-only social networking hotspot opened its doors to anyone older than 13, professors and graduate student instructors have been trickling onto Facebook. As the trend spreads, that trickle is becoming a regular stream.

Facebook's increasing popularity among the older set, though, means students and faculty members are rubbing shoulders through cyber society in a way they never would in real life. The foray of the middle-aged onto Facebook is resulting in heightened familiarity between professor and student that both sides are struggling to negotiate.

Aaron McCollough, a lecturer in the English department, joined because some of his former students created a Facebook group called "Aaron McCollough's Street Team." He wanted to see what the deal was, and now, over a year later, he's submerged in the Facebook scene.

"Usually I just log in, look at the feed, see what the most recent sort of developments are," he said.

The majority of McCollough's Facebook friends are fellow poets located around the country. That's why one of McCollough's favorite functions is the status bar. He said that it's like a "really, really brief poetic form."

"A lot of times people say really interesting things on there," he said. "It's like, 'What can people fit on that syntax?' "

McCollough updates his own status bar relatively frequently. "Aaron is so bored with the U.S.A.," one of his statuses read last week.

McCollough interacts - or "goofs around" as he describes it - with other poets on Facebook mainly through the Facebook mail feature.

"Some days will be heavy Facebook days if I get one of those weird things that's almost like IM-ing, but it's not IM-ing," he said, referening to Facebook messages.

McCollough said that his contact with colleagues at the University on Facebook is a bit sparser, but it still exists.

He said sometimes he and other professors and lecturers compete via each other's Facebook applications, like completing movie quizzes or playing a rousing game of Scrabulous.

Many of McCollough's other Facebook friends are people at the University - 15 or 20 of them are his current or former students.

"I don't 'friend' students, to me that seems like it might be a little weird - I don't know why," he said. "But students have 'friended' me. It doesn't bother me. I always accept."

After receiving a friend request from a student, McCollough said he skims the profile but usually doesn't find anything he considers too crazy.

"If I see something on there that I think is stupid, I just think 'Oh that's stupid, they might regret that one day,' " he said.

McCollough thinks there's an untapped power to use Facebook as a tool to bridge the gap between professors and students.

"I think that (Facebook) feels safe in a way. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does," he said. "People feel a little more comfortable asking questions that they need answered. That's why I think that it has potential as a mentoring tool."

He hopes that if students are comfortable using Facebook to interact with their professors, they'll be more inclined to come to office hours.

McCollough said the main harm in professors and students interacting on Facebook is excessive familiarity, but that if the site is used properly, it shouldn't be a problem. Professors, he said, shouldn't join the site if they think they could lose respect from their students.

"If an adult can't manage to wield the respectable amount of authority over students, then that adult probably shouldn't be on Facebook," he said.

LSA junior Geoff Chiles, who is a student in one of McCollough's Introduction to Poetry classes, said McCollough mentioned he had a Facebook account at the end of class one day, so he looked him up.

Chiles said that his perception of McCollough improved after browsing his Facebook profile. He learned that his professor was "a pretty cultured guy" and had graduated from a prestigious fine arts school, The Univesrity of the South in Tennessee.

"He plays Xbox, I saw. He likes to use his treadmill," Chiles said.

Chiles, who is a residential adviser in Bursley Residence Hall, said he wasn't concerned with how McCollough would perceive his own Facebook profile.