> > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Not r

> > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Not really sure what you're saying. The fact that she's teaching just means that she isn't using (or doesn't have) a research grant to `buy out' of teaching. > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. Again, I don't know where you got this idea from. Usually (in a math research department such as the one at Stanford) whoever's arranging the teaching assignments doesn't look at an instructors teaching credentials at all, unless they are egregiously bad. So all we can conclude is that she isn't absolutely awful at teaching. The fact of the matter is that many researchers (due to their incentives) view teaching, especially lower division courses, as a chore, so really anyone in the department who wants to teach such a course is not going to get much opposition.