Dear Provost Holub,
     This is to first of all welcome you to UTK on behalf of the Faculty
Senate. I hope you have been able to become somewhat familiar with the
situation here in your brief time on campus. It is my understanding that 
you will be meeting with Chancellor Crabtree and myself on Friday 
July 14 at 3PM. As a prelude to that, I am listing below some of the 
issues I view as of primary importance currently. Many of these are
continuations of matters discussed previously with Anne Mayhew, but
some are newly arisen. The issues discussed by myself and then Senate
President Kennedy in our last meeting with Chancellor Crabtree are 
summarized below in a note I sent the Chancellor after the meeting.
     Matters for discussion:

1. The faculty have been doing an outstanding job by many measures (I will
bring some of these for your edification), but the recent administrative
decisions regarding raises are simply the latest evidence that faculty
concerns and input are not taken seriously here. I can think of no
better method to ensure that younger faculty look elsewhere for positions 
than the insulting decision made by the President regarding minimum
raises here (my estimate was that 21% of the UTK faculty would not
be receiving the minimum raise guaranteed to clerical and other staff
here, if they did not receive anything above the 1% across-the-board raise). 
This is a recipe for continuing losses of the very people we invest 
so much energy (and expense) in attracting. 
    I think it would be very useful to obtain a portrait ot the recent
changes in faculty here and I hope you will consider obtaining such
information from Heads (who are the most knowledgeable about the 
reasons for faculty departures). This would include what faculty have 
left, for what reasons, over say the last 5 years. There are numerous 
Departments in very serious situations. Over the past 3 years, the 
number of tenure/tenure track faculty has remained static while 
enrollments have increased substantially and the number of
full-time instructors/lecturers has increased by 13%. The basic 
data concerning who we are losing and why is pre-requisite to 
developing a plan that strengthens UT academics.  

2. A distinguished faculty member recently commented to me that the 
long-term administration view is that "the primary goal of academics 
at UT is mediocrity". Despite numerous statements by the Chancellor 
and several Presidents that we are moving towards "AAU status",
there is no plan in evidence to bring this about, and little evidence 
that the UT administration (System or campus) believes this is a feasible 
goal. It is time for a firm vision as to what UT desires to be and
a plan to get us there. If AAU status is the goal and is deemed to be
achievable, then what are we doing to bring it about within a reasonable
(say 5-year) time frame? If it is not a goal, then what is a more 
reasonable one for us to achieve as a campus? The President has stated 
publicly that UT is to be a top-10 school in athletics, and it is Ok 
to subsidize this from non-athletic funding sources. Is that our only
goal here?

3. There are ongoing problems with program/unit assessment associated
with what we called "review and redirection" in the past. There is 
no agreed-upon procedure for this process (as there was several years 
ago), and this has led to tremendously disruptive initiatives, including
the ongoing matter of the potential elimination of Computer Science
here. There are much better methods to deal with reorganization and
realignment of resources that fully involve the various components
of the campus. Surely we can do better than the haphazard and inequitable
approach taken recently.

4. There are numerous ongoing complaints regarding inequity of compensation
here, and I suggest that it is time to at least evaluate a basic concern
that I hear expressed repeatedly (that there is gender bias in faculty 
salaries here). It is my intention to evaluate this in a careful statistical 
manner this year, and I hope you will be supportive of this initiative. 
Similarly, there are ongoing concerns regarding recruitment of an 
appropriately diverse faculty here. Given the wonderful recent 
changes in composition of the undergraduate classes due to Geier and 
the Lottery scholarships, we owe it to our students to enhance the 
diversity of potential mentors for these outstanding new students.

5. I have already copied you on a letter regarding the inappropriate 
approach taken in advertising for the Governor's Chairs positions. 
The level of incompetency with regard to this is astounding. More
than two weeks after an outrageous expenditure is made for an
ad in the major US scientific journal, the web site it prominently 
displays for further information does not even mention the positions 
included in the ad. It is past time for all aspects of these positions 
to be managed at the campus level. 

6. The Chancellor has mentioned in previous conversations that it is 
his desire to carry out national searches for all major positions 
in the administration at Associate Vice Chancellor-level and above
for which an open search was not held already. It would be helpful to 
know if you concur with this and if so what the schedule would be for 
the searches in your office.

I look forward to working with you over the next year.

Sincerely,
       Lou

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)
7/11/06 
cc Chancellor Crabtree