Required attire: Business-sexy

They say the suit makes the man.

In that case, the shoes make the woman.

Michelle Moshier, an accounting professor at the University at Albany, has been rated the "hottest" professor on the Web site, Ratemyprofessor.com

"I think it's the shoes," said Moshier, pulling up her brown twill pant leg to expose ankle-length brown boots. "I love shoes, it's like my weakness."

The site asks visitors, "Where else can you find out what other think of an instructor?" Ratemyprofessor.com gives students a "place to make a difference in [their] education," according to the site.

Professors at each school on the site are rated on a five-point scale of clarity, easiness, helpfulness and overall quality.

Students also have an option to include an emoticon to represent their overall feelings towards the professor and give them a chili pepper for their "hotness" factor. Moshier has the most chili peppers of any professor at UAlbany: 47 peppers out of 90 ratings.

According to the rating site, the chili pepper total is based on the sum of "hot" and "not hot" votes. The chili pepper shows up if the sum is positive. If the sum is negative or zero, a chili pepper does not appear next to the professor's name.

"It's so weird to me-- the chili pepper thing," Moshier said. "It's flattering. I think it's just another way to say something nice about a person."

The Web site also advises in its frequently asked questions section that the ratings are "not really" statistically valid. "It's a listing of opinions and should be treated as such."

However, at the Canadian version of this site, professors who were rated highly on the Web site were most likely to win the Distinguished Teacher Award, according to a Teaching Matters Newsletter from Sept. 2001.

Moshier, however, hasn't checked the Web site in years.

Whether or not these ratings are valid, one thing is for sure about the Income Tax Accounting II professor: she's hot.

When I was lost in the Business Administration building, trying to find this elusive hottie I ran into one of my sorority sisters, senior and student of Moshier's, Kristina Hosea. She instructed me to "look for the hot one."

"All the guys in her class go just to look at her!" UAlbany junior and Moshier student Jacqueline Rodd said.

Sorry gentlemen, but this looker is a missus. Her husband, she has been married to for 15 years, actually doesn't like his wife's high "hotness" factor.

"He just doesn't want to hear anything about it," Moshier said. "He's like, 'You need to start dressing differently,' and I don't go in there in a tube top. I dress professionally! I think I dress young."

"She dresses, like, business-sexy," Rodd said.

Moshier said she often has female students asking her where she buys her clothes.

"I go in trying to look nice."

When I visited Moshier in her Tax class, she sported a black dress with a shallow v-neck that ended a little below her knees and a shiny black belt that had a huge buckle in the middle around her waist. The belt buckle matched the buckle on her black shiny pumps. Hidden behind her shoulder-length dark brown hair were silvery, shiny, dangly earrings.

Her class had their first test the following day, and Moshier decided to play a rousing game of Jeopardy with them in preparation for it.

With game-show host-like inflection, she read questions from her podium, calling contestants up by their names and egging them on, saying their team needs them.

Moshier attributes most of her hotness to her personality.

"Have you ever met someone and been like, 'Oh, he's so cute,' and then you get to know them and then they're just an idiot?" she said.

Moshier also tries to have a sense of humor. Hanging in her office is a "Top Ten," like on David Letterman, quotes that her students made her one semester of, well, Moshier-isms. Also, if anyone falls asleep in her sometimes 400 to 500 student lectures, she'll go over and borrow someone else's jacket and cover them up, or ask if the student would like a blanket.

"I get silly and I like to make fun of myself. I don't know, I guess they like that," she said.

Moshier said she also believes that her teaching style adds to her hotness.

At the end of the semester, when she reads the course evaluations, most of them are positive, she said. Moshier generally receives evaluations and E-mails that say "thank you for taking the time" or "thank you for helping me."

" I really do generally care about my students. We have pow-wow sessions when we work on homeworks, so I think students get to know me really well."

When UAlbany vacations don't line up with her childrens', Moshier brings her three children, Abbey, 12, Paige, 9, and Danny, 6, to class with her.

"They're a lot of fun," Moshier said.

"I share a lot about myself in the classroom. I don't hesitate to chit-chat or say 'Can you believe my kids did this?'"

Moshier has been a lecturer at UAlbany for about 11 years. She is a Certified Public Accountant and does tax work on the side.

"My main focus is teaching," she said.

She's won the Business School Outstanding Award for Teaching two years in a row.

So, with all the teaching, outside work, award winning, and three children, how does Moshier stay hot?

Seltzer.

"It's my addiction, I'm not a soda person," she said.

Moshier had two cases of lemon-flavored Seltzer sitting next to her mini fridge.

Her other addiction is jogging.

In fact, Moshier ran the Marines Corps marathon recently.

She just started because after her first two kids, "the weight just poured off me," she said.

Her favorite running music is 70's, Colbie Caillat and Rod Stewart.

"I don't care, I love him!" she said.