Not adding up: Berkeley math professor unjustly fired

Is it possible for a teacher to lose his or her job for teaching too well? In light of recent events at UC Berkeley, it would seem so.

On Oct. 31, the Cal math department made the formal decision not to renew the contract of math lecturer Alexander Coward.

Oddly enough, Coward has received overwhelmingly stellar reviews from his students, thousands of whom flocked to social media to support him after he was let go, launching a Facebook page titled “Protest to Keep Coward at Cal” and even spawning the viral hashtag #IStandWithCoward.

It seems that Coward, who earned a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford, lost his position because of his unconventional but effective teaching methods, which have earned him considerable backlash from the university’s traditional math department. Specifically, Coward does not believe in standard measures of student progress such as graded homework and quizzes and instead prefers to have his students enjoy working on math rather than doing it for the school requirements.

While Coward’s teaching is highly popular and has achieved remarkable student success, it does not align with Cal’s confining departmental expectations, begging the larger question: Is it more important for teachers to adhere to pre-established and out-of-touch norms of how things “should” be done, or to adopt an innovativeapproach that focuses on the innate subject matter and profoundly impacts students?

Due to a collective bargaining agreement, laws and policies, Cal was unable to comment on Coward’s departure. The Cal math department did, however, claim that it was common for contracts not to be renewed. But lecturers like Coward are far from common; they are exceptional.

Following the university’s decision, Coward made a blog post showing evidence of his effective teachings methods, specifically improvement in his students’ grades. Coward often receives standing ovations for his lectures, and his courses are consistently some of the most popular in his department.

Out of the three lecture options for Math 1A, the introductory math class, Coward teaches two, each of which has a full roster of nearly 400 students. The other lecture, taught by a  professor, has roughly only 100 students. Most of Coward’s students from his 1A and 16B classes score an average of 0.17 (out of 4.0) points higher than their peers in a subsequent math course after taking a course taught by Coward.

As if this were all not enough, the student evaluations from Coward’s 2013 courses were not only predominantly positive, but also higher than any scores received by professors in the last 18 years, with Coward scoring an average 6.5 points out of a possible 7. Students often noted Coward’s enthusiasm, accessibility, thoroughness and genuine love for his subject matter and students.

It thus appears that Coward is being dismissed for being too competent and a threat to other professors. According to Coward’s post, a fellow department chairmen, uncomfortable at Coward’s immense popularity with students, even informed Coward he was causing problems because students weren’t signing up for other professors’ classes on his account, and that he should teach in a “more ordinary” way that aligns with department norms.

This “more ordinary” approach apparently means teaching mechanically from the textbook rather than embracing student talent and creativity, as Coward did. It means not motivating students through encouragement and inspiration, but instead through busywork in the form of GPA-affecting homework, quizzes and assessments.

Essentially, Coward made other professors in the department look bad, and they did everything in their power to remove him. As Coward wrote in his blog post, “In a nutshell, what the department said was: Stop making us look bad. If you don’t, we’ll fire you.” And fire him they did — at the expense of quality education.