MEMO Date: July 14, 2017 To: President Sylvia Mathews Burwell Cc: Caleen Jennings, Chair of the President’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion; Don Williamson, Chair of the Grievance Committee Re: Tenure Denial of Carolyn Brown Dear President Burwell: We, the undersigned, are writing to register our deep dismay about the recent tenure denial of Professor Carolyn Brown in the School of Communication. In his denial letter to Professor Brown, Provost Scott Bass used student teaching evaluation scores to claim that her classroom instruction was not up to AU standards. Provost Bass claimed, “There are significant problems in your teaching and they revolve around consistency from one course and/or one term to the next. Further, within courses, even those that seem to go well, there is often substantial ranges of scores from the overall mean score (e.g., the standard deviation).” In our collective years working at R-1, Ivy League, and research-oriented institutions like AU, we have not seen a tenure denial case that hinged on the standard deviation of numerical teaching evaluation scores. Professor Brown clearly has met the requirements for tenure at AU. Both external and internal reviewers in her field (six external reviewers, three SOC senior faculty—Professors Charles Lewis, Maggie Stogner, and John Watson—and SOC Dean Jeffrey Rutenbeck) judged her as tenurable. Her film, The Salinas Project, was distributed by American Public Television and aired in 90 percent of the top 20 markets in the United States and more than 80 percent of the nation. This film won a Bronze Omni Award and a 2015 Gold CINDY Award, and Brown received an Associated Press/Robert R. Eunson Distinguished Lecturer Award. Brown also won a prestigious Gracie Allen Award from the Alliance for Women in Media for another one of her films, From the Fields. This film won an Orson Welles California Film Award and a CreaTV award for Excellence in Directing. Brown screened and spoke about From the Fields across the country at Stanford University, The National Steinbeck Center, Harvard University, San Jose State, Georgetown, Oregon State University, and Northern Arizona University. The National Educational Telecommunications Association also distributed her first film on the tenure track to PBS stations nationwide and it aired in more than 300 major markets. Last but not least, she even managed to write two articles and create 11 videos shorts for the Investigative Reporting Workshop during her time on the tenure clock. Without a doubt, Brown has not only exceeded AU’s tenure guidelines in terms of her scholarly and professional production, but she has also achieved a public profile that reaches well beyond our campus. She has become a major voice in Latinx film-making in the United States.  

 

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Moreover, this case undoubtedly shows the very real limitations of using student evaluations (especially numerical scores) as a measure of effective teaching. Many studies show that student evaluations are far from objective; they tend to disproportionately punish women and faculty of color who teach courses that challenge the racism and sexism in our society (**see links to reports included below). At the very least, we have to examine faculty members’ scores within the context of on-going forms of discrimination that can negatively impact their evaluations. At best, we need to find new ways to evaluate and support teaching altogether. It also seems as if the place of student evaluations in determining a tenure-track professor’s promotion are highly arbitrary: sometimes they matter and sometimes they do not. It appears as if they have become a mode of arbitrarily punishing some faculty and not others. Most of all, this case illustrates that AU is not living up to its supposed commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social justice. We are deeply ashamed to be at an institution of higher education that fails to actively support the work and careers of women and faculty of color. In particular, Professor Brown’s case will have a chilling effect on junior and contingent faculty who are contemplating having children. After all, the lower scores in question are from semesters when she adopted infants. Is this the kind of university community that we endeavor to build–one that is clearly hostile to the lived realities of women? In addition, her case will have a chilling effect on junior and contingent faculty (and indeed faculty of any rank) who are working to transform the university into a space that not only recognizes the central importance of scholarship for and by non-white peoples, but also values and respects the equality and dignity of non-white peoples. We would also add that her tenure denial comes at the moment when student protests have forced AU to reshape its hiring practices and curriculum. It comes at a moment when we have been unable to find a tenured Latinx scholar who works in the field of Latinx Studies to create and run an interdisciplinary Latinx Studies program at AU–where Latinx students are one of the fastest growing demographics at the university. Sincerely, Theresa Runstedtler (Associate Professor of History, Chair of the Critical Race, Gender & Culture Studies Collaborative, CAS) Eileen J. Findlay (Professor of History and Critical Race, Gender & Culture Studies; Director of Undergraduate Studies, History, CAS) Kate Haulman (Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies, History, CAS) Lisa Leff (Professor of History, CAS) Jeffrey Middents (Associate Professor of Literature, CAS) Fiona Brideoake (Assistant Professor of Literature (tenured), CAS) Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (Associate Professor of Sociology, CAS) Adrienne Pine (Associate Professor of Anthropology, CAS)  

 

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David Vine (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Chair of Dean’s Advisory Committee, CAS) Cathy Lisa Schneider (Associate Professor, SIS) Carolyn A. Gallaher (Associate Professor, SIS) John Watson (Associate Professor, Director of Journalism, SOC) Leena Jayaswal (Professor, Director of the Photography Program, SOC) Maggie Burnette Stogner (Professor, Film and Media Arts, SOC) Brigid Maher (Associate Professor, Director of Film and Media Arts, SOC) Aram Sinnreich (Associate Professor, Communication Studies, SOC) **Evidence of Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching 1.   https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/11/new-analysis-offers-more-evidenceagainst-student-evaluations-teaching 2.   http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/01/25/463846130/why-women-professors-get-lowerratings 3.   http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/16/is-it-fair-to-rate-professorsonline/gender-bias-exists-in-professor-evaluations 4.   http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/01/students-give-women-professors-worseevaluations.html 5.   https://psmag.com/beyond-bossy-or-brilliant-gender-bias-in-student-evaluations-ofteaching-97cc72b0a621#.b58jc7wpn 6.   https://tcf.org/content/commentary/student-evaluations-skewed-women-minorityprofessors/ 7.   http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/16/is-it-fair-to-rate-professorsonline/teacher-evaluations-could-be-hurting-faculty-diversity-at-universities