President Petersen, Chancellor Crabtree, and Provost Holub,
      This is a formal letter of concern in my role as President of
the UTK Faculty Senate regarding the manner in the Governor's Chairs
positions are being advertised and the criteria being set for these
appointments. These positions are all supposed to include tenured 
faculty status at UT, with presumably most being based in a UTK 
Department. All candidates for Full Professor faculty status at UTK 
are required by our Faculty Handbook to "be accomplished teachers" in 
addition to having an outstanding scholarly record of accomplishments. 
The criteria for appointment to a tenured position specifically notes 
requirements for teaching including "Professional excellence is 
reflected in the faculty member's teaching". Beyond this, Chancellor 
Crabtree has stated publicly that it is his expectation that UTK 
Governor's Chairs appointees would be involved in teaching 
lower-division undergraduate courses. 
     Given the above, it is disconcerting to say the least that the
beautiful full-page advertisement for Governor's Chairs in the UT-ORNL 
Joint Institute for Computational Science in the June 23, 2006 issue 
of Science does not include any statement about either requirements 
for an accomplished teaching record, nor about teaching expectations 
for the position. It includes no mention at all of the educational 
aspects of this position. The ad prominently references a web page:
http://www.tennessee.edu/governorschairs/
which includes no statement about teaching responsibilities for these
positions, or requirements for demonstrated teaching ability. In fact,
the web page does not even list the open positions in JICS, but only
lists positions in other areas. A first step for a possibly interested 
candidate attracted by this no-doubt quite expensive ad would
be to look at the listed web site, and see that the web site does not
even list the open positions in the ad. I will leave it up to
your imagination as to what their opinion of the competence of 
the individuals running this search would be given this.
    This is therefore a formal request that the process of the 
searches for these Governor's Chairs positions specifically include 
the teaching and other educational responsibilities for the positions 
in all materials, that it be made clear to all concerned who the 
responsible individuals are at UT for these positions (the ad
only lists the ORNL staff member as a point of contact, which 
is why I am sending this letter to the three of you) and that it be made 
clear that all standard search procedures for tenured faculty positions 
at UTK will be followed (note that all recent ads for faculty positions 
at UTK I am aware of do make explicit statements about teaching 
expectations).
   Sincerely,
        Louis J. Gross
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
    and Mathematics
Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling
University of Tennessee - Knoxville
President, UTK Faculty Senate
Past-President, Society for Mathematical Biology (www.smb.org)
7/6/06 
cc Faculty Senate Summer Executive Council