letters@utk.edu Response to letter by Thom Gray To the Editor: In my role as President of the UTK Faculty Senate, this is in response to blatant erroneous statements by Thom Gray in a letter to the Daily Beacon published on February 12, 2007. Gray's remarks are based upon a biased and fallacious analysis of data published in the Tennessee 101 collection of student responses to course evaluations. Erroneous statements such as those by Gray must not be allowed to go unanswered, as they may mislead members of the community, are unnecessarily divisive to an atmosphere of tolerance and appreciation for diversity, and erode the utility of student input to the tenure evaluation process. Gray's arguments are flawed because they: (1) Ignore all educational efforts except those of a single lower division course, implying that zero weight in evaluation of teaching should be given to African-American Studies classes and other upper division classes (including a standard upper division course taken by many History majors) for which a faculty member is responsible. Such a biased exclusion of courses is completely inappropriate at a comprehensive university such as UTK. (2) Selectively ignore part of the data which if included would greatly alter the conclusions. Gray excludes from analysis the History 222 course with the largest response (92 students), and instead utilizes only data from a single semester. Selective use of data in this manner is a form of lying. (3) Make inappropriate comparisons by equivalently utilizing responses of students to large-lecture class questions (for Professor White) to compare to those of others (Booker and Brown) who taught only small discussion sections. (4) Assign equal weights to all section responses independent of the number of students responding to the survey. Even one ignorant of basic statistical analysis can understand that Gray's equivalent use of averages based on sections with 6 student responses to those with many more responses is fallacious. (5) Makes false statements. Gray statements "no other History 222 Professors received reviews as bad as White's since 2002" and Professor White "performed abyssmally when he taught a major class" are patently incorrect. A correct analysis of student responses regarding Professor White's teaching as published in Tennessee 101, accounting for sample size variation between sections, provides no statistically significant evidence that Professor White's teaching efforts as indicated by student responses are rated more poorly than others teaching either large sections of History 222 or faculty teaching the variety of lower and upper division undergraduate and graduate History courses expected of a tenure-track faculty member. I urge that the letter by Gray be retracted by the Editors. Sincerely, Louis J. Gross Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling President, UTK Faculty Senate gross@tiem.utk.edu http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/ Office phone: 974-4295. Secretary: 974-3065