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Unpopular opinion, but I think he's being overly dramatic. "My Fall 2013 Math 1A students were tracked into the next course in the sequence, Math 1B, and it wa

Unpopular opinion, but I think he's being overly dramatic. "My Fall 2013 Math 1A students were tracked into the next course in the sequence, Math 1B, and it was found that their average grade in Math 1B was 0.17 grade points higher than that of those students who took Math 1A with another instructor." 0.17. Not even a whole point. Student evaluations don't really count since those are highly subjective. Students tend to hastily mark whatever they want on them because they want to get the evaluations over with as soon as possible. If a professor is somewhat amicable and invests a moderate level of effort into his/her teaching, then it's not hard to score at least a 6 on average on these evaluations (as students would mark either 6 or 7 in such a case). Anyway, his performance as a lecturer is irrelevant to his argument. There are three criteria that junior faculty are assessed against in order to become tenured at UC Berkeley (or, otherwise, dismissed): teaching quality, reputation and research. Funny how he left out the last bit. He hasn't published anything since 2013. And the university is probably firing him to hire another professor at a cheaper salary in order to save money, contrary to his belief that the university is firing him because of disagreements with his teaching philosophy. Universities tend to do this to professors who don't have much research potential and don't teach specialized, upper division courses. The UC system is crippled financially, so departments are more inclined to carry out dismissals of non-tenured professors who don't publish much and who solely teach lower division courses. Non-tenured professors can be fired at will. That's just another day in the life of academia. The part about the micro-managing harasser and treatment of women, staff and lecturers is definitely worrisome, though. But we need to be careful about believing in these implications absolutely because of Coward's state of mind at the moment. He has already blown the quality of his teaching out of proportion.

cellar_door 11y ago
His salary is $67,886. Are you really going to hire somebody to do his job for less money than that? In regards to your points about research, maybe the math department should consider establishing a "teaching professor" role like the EECS department has done. Most of the lower division introductory CS courses are taught by teaching professors like Paul Hilfinger, John Denero, Dan Garcia, and Josh Hug. Given that math is so important to a variety of majors on campus, why shouldn't we demand that large, lower division math courses be taught by people who are experts in teaching?
- VanillaSwirl 11y ago
  $67K is on the high end of the spectrum for a newly seasoned non-tenured faculty member. Anyway, teaching salaries are required to increase incrementally, so his original starting salary was most likely lower than that salary. Most universities, particularly public ones, will engage in the practice of recycling lower-division teaching faculty every so often in order to avoid the wage jump from non-tenure status to tenure status. Yeah, established teaching positions are a thing in other industrialized countries like Canada. The public higher-education system in the state of California has many flaws, and the absence of established teaching positions is one of them ... because the system is financially crippled. And that's the point I'm trying to make here. Coward should not be mad at UC Berkeley's Math Department. He thinks the buck starts and stops with the Math Department. The department is the way it is because of the greater UC system's financial insolvency molded by factors out of the control of UC Berkeley's Math Department and UC Berkeley as a whole. The UC system sucks because of inappropriate state economic policies over the past decade or so that include egregious spending on unnecessary things.
  - raykaye47 11y ago
    The professors in the UC system are not paid well, but the administrators are all $100K+ with pensions
cyrus_ 11y ago
By my reading of the essay, he was hired as teaching faculty, so he is not being judged on his research or reputation within the research community.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jathak 11y ago
He isn't employed as a research professor. He's employed as a lecturer. Berkeley does have a lecturer position with security of employment (commonly called lecturer SOE or teaching professor). These positions are evaluated on teaching rather than research. I don't know how common it is in other departments, but I know the EECS department employs several teaching professors (which means many classes, especially 61A and 61B, are taught by professors whose primary job is teaching).
- Ar-Curunir 11y ago
  The math department here traditionally doesn't hire long-term lecturers, as mentioned in one of the email chains Coward attached.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    That's a pretty poor reflection on the math department!
ablatner 11y ago
If you read the whole article you'll see that he's actually lower paid. One of the reasons the department doesn't like him is that he demonstrates that it's possible to teach more students better (even if just slightly) at a lower salary, and that scares them because they're so focused on increasing their budget.
rahimnathwani 11y ago
"Funny how he left out the last bit. He hasn't published anything since 2013." The post suggests that he's "full-time lecturer". The grievance says that his job title is "Lecturer". Why would that require him to publish research?
laxatives 11y ago
It seems pretty clear that it is immensely difficult to score at least a 6 average on these evaluations. Based on the article, it sounds sufficiently difficult that almost no one else managed to score above a 6 in two decades.
- VanillaSwirl 11y ago
  Student evaluations are heavily influenced by perception of the professor's personality. Look on Ninja Courses and you'll see what I'm talking about. Coward has a cult of influence that makes him seem like a close friend to his students, and this no doubt skews his ratings and potentially distorts students' perception of the professor's performance as a teacher (rather than his personality). There are professors whose teaching quality is actually proficient and sometimes excellent, but whose student evaluations are marred by the fact that they can't speak English well, they have social deficiencies (e.g. Asperger's syndrome), etc. Student evaluations are flawed in the same way intelligence tests are flawed; student evaluations favor professors who speak and communicate most closely to the popular consciousness of students at the time in the same way intelligence tests are biased against non-native test-takers (some questions posed on intelligence tests may use culturally native objects).
  - nilkn 11y ago
    > There are professors whose teaching quality is actually proficient and sometimes excellent, but whose student evaluations are marred by the fact that they can't speak English well, they have social deficiencies (e.g. Asperger's syndrome), etc And those teachers deserve to have lower student ratings, because the quality of the experience for the students is drastically lower even if they learn the material at relatively the same level of competence. I myself have social deficiencies, and I don't expect people to give me sympathy points if I ended up lecturing a large class. I fail to see how anything you've written about Coward's "cult of personality" is bad at all.
  - learc83 11y ago
    >are marred by the fact that they can't speak English well How can your teaching quality be proficient if you can't speak English well? Sure there are teachers who get unfair evaluations because they have a bit of an accent, but if you actually can't speak English well, how are you effectively teaching in English?
hendzen 11y ago
I assume by grade point he means GPA (i.e. out of 4.0). So 0.17 is actually fairly significant.

cellar_door 11y ago

His salary is $67,886. Are you really going to hire somebody to do his job for less money than that? In regards to your points about research, maybe the math department should consider establishing a "teaching professor" role like the EECS department has done. Most of the lower division introductory CS courses are taught by teaching professors like Paul Hilfinger, John Denero, Dan Garcia, and Josh Hug. Given that math is so important to a variety of majors on campus, why shouldn't we demand that large, lower division math courses be taught by people who are experts in teaching?

VanillaSwirl 11y ago
$67K is on the high end of the spectrum for a newly seasoned non-tenured faculty member. Anyway, teaching salaries are required to increase incrementally, so his original starting salary was most likely lower than that salary. Most universities, particularly public ones, will engage in the practice of recycling lower-division teaching faculty every so often in order to avoid the wage jump from non-tenure status to tenure status. Yeah, established teaching positions are a thing in other industrialized countries like Canada. The public higher-education system in the state of California has many flaws, and the absence of established teaching positions is one of them ... because the system is financially crippled. And that's the point I'm trying to make here. Coward should not be mad at UC Berkeley's Math Department. He thinks the buck starts and stops with the Math Department. The department is the way it is because of the greater UC system's financial insolvency molded by factors out of the control of UC Berkeley's Math Department and UC Berkeley as a whole. The UC system sucks because of inappropriate state economic policies over the past decade or so that include egregious spending on unnecessary things.
- raykaye47 11y ago
  The professors in the UC system are not paid well, but the administrators are all $100K+ with pensions

cyrus_ 11y ago

By my reading of the essay, he was hired as teaching faculty, so he is not being judged on his research or reputation within the research community.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

jathak 11y ago

He isn't employed as a research professor. He's employed as a lecturer. Berkeley does have a lecturer position with security of employment (commonly called lecturer SOE or teaching professor). These positions are evaluated on teaching rather than research. I don't know how common it is in other departments, but I know the EECS department employs several teaching professors (which means many classes, especially 61A and 61B, are taught by professors whose primary job is teaching).

Ar-Curunir 11y ago
The math department here traditionally doesn't hire long-term lecturers, as mentioned in one of the email chains Coward attached.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  That's a pretty poor reflection on the math department!

ablatner 11y ago

If you read the whole article you'll see that he's actually lower paid. One of the reasons the department doesn't like him is that he demonstrates that it's possible to teach more students better (even if just slightly) at a lower salary, and that scares them because they're so focused on increasing their budget.

rahimnathwani 11y ago

"Funny how he left out the last bit. He hasn't published anything since 2013." The post suggests that he's "full-time lecturer". The grievance says that his job title is "Lecturer". Why would that require him to publish research?

laxatives 11y ago

It seems pretty clear that it is immensely difficult to score at least a 6 average on these evaluations. Based on the article, it sounds sufficiently difficult that almost no one else managed to score above a 6 in two decades.

VanillaSwirl 11y ago
Student evaluations are heavily influenced by perception of the professor's personality. Look on Ninja Courses and you'll see what I'm talking about. Coward has a cult of influence that makes him seem like a close friend to his students, and this no doubt skews his ratings and potentially distorts students' perception of the professor's performance as a teacher (rather than his personality). There are professors whose teaching quality is actually proficient and sometimes excellent, but whose student evaluations are marred by the fact that they can't speak English well, they have social deficiencies (e.g. Asperger's syndrome), etc. Student evaluations are flawed in the same way intelligence tests are flawed; student evaluations favor professors who speak and communicate most closely to the popular consciousness of students at the time in the same way intelligence tests are biased against non-native test-takers (some questions posed on intelligence tests may use culturally native objects).
- nilkn 11y ago
  > There are professors whose teaching quality is actually proficient and sometimes excellent, but whose student evaluations are marred by the fact that they can't speak English well, they have social deficiencies (e.g. Asperger's syndrome), etc And those teachers deserve to have lower student ratings, because the quality of the experience for the students is drastically lower even if they learn the material at relatively the same level of competence. I myself have social deficiencies, and I don't expect people to give me sympathy points if I ended up lecturing a large class. I fail to see how anything you've written about Coward's "cult of personality" is bad at all.
- learc83 11y ago
  >are marred by the fact that they can't speak English well How can your teaching quality be proficient if you can't speak English well? Sure there are teachers who get unfair evaluations because they have a bit of an accent, but if you actually can't speak English well, how are you effectively teaching in English?

hendzen 11y ago

I assume by grade point he means GPA (i.e. out of 4.0). So 0.17 is actually fairly significant.