March 12, 2006

Dr. Alan Covich
Director, Institute of Ecology
University of Georgia

RE: Post-tenure Review of John Pickering

Dear Alan:

A Post-tenure Review of Dr. John Pickering was conducted in February and
March of 2006. The review committee consisted of Ron Pulliam (chair), Patty
Gowaty, and Jim Porter, all Professors in the Institute of Ecology. The
review committee met with Dr. Pickering and requested that he provide an
updated curriculum vitae (attachment 1), and a statement of future plans
(attachment 2) to the committee for review. The committee also requested
and received copies of his annual evaluations from the Director of the
Institute of Ecology.
The review committee finds Dr. Pickering's overall performance for the past
five years satisfactory. The purpose of post-tenure review is "to examine,
recognize, develop, and enhance the performance of tenured faculty members
at the University of Georgia." In reviewing Dr. Pickering's contributions,
the committee concludes that many of Dr. Pickering's past contributions
have not been fully recognized and appreciated by the University o Georgia,
and we recommend a number of steps can be taken to further develop and
enhance his contributions in the future. Below, we first review his
teaching and scholarly contributions and then we offer some specific
recommendations.
Teaching:

Dr. Pickering is a gifted teacher and a dedicated student mentor. However,
the committee feels that his teaching talents are not currently being
utilized to the full benefit of the students of the University of Georgia.
To evaluate his teaching contributions the committee compared his teaching
assignments in the past five years to his earlier teaching assignments at
the University.

The primary courses taught by Dr. Pickering since coming the University in
1986 and the number of times he has taught each course (in parentheses) are
as follows:

ECOL 3500 -- General Ecology, 1986-1999 (x20)
ECOL 4110/6110 -- Insect Diversity, 1998-2004 (x5)
ECOL 4130L -- Ecological Methodology, 2005
ECOL 8170 -- Natural History of the Hymenoptera, 1999-2005 (x4)
FRES 1020-- Natural History seminar, 2001-2005 (x5)

Dr. Pickering's teaching talents are attested to by numerous personal
testimonies and by the official recognition of the UGA Sandy Beaver Award
for Teaching Excellence (1994) and the Outstanding Upper Division Advisor
Award (1996).

From 1986 to 1999, Dr. Pickering taught the core ecology undergraduate
course (ECOL 3500) 20 different times and to over 1500 students, in total.
However, since 2000, his teaching has been restricted to teaching smaller,
more specialized upper division and graduate courses. Among these, the
Insect Diversity course (ECOL 4110/6110) is especially noteworthy since it
is one of the few intensive field courses offered to our undergraduates.
Dr. Pickering has also taught numerous Independent Study courses providing
students an opportunity to become involved in research during their
undergraduate years. He has also supervised a large number of graduate and
undergraduate theses. Finally, beyond his traditional teaching role at the
University, he has conducted a number of Discover Life training workshops
in locations around the world.

Although the quality of Dr. Pickering course offerings remains high, the
specialized courses he now teaches attract relatively few students. The
committee feels that his teaching contributions at the University can be
strengthened by re-engaging him in the core undergraduate course (ECOL
3500) and he has expressed a willingness to do so.

Scholarship and Public Service:

Dr. Pickering has made fundamentally important contributions to the study
of biological diversity, albeit not always in the form typical of most
academic scientists. Like other academics, he has conducted original
research, published in peer-reviewed journals, and obtained competitive
research funding. He has worked on a wide range of problems including the
epidemiology and virulence of infectious diseases, and sex ratio theory. He
is one of the world's leading experts on the natural history of the
Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps, and sawflies) and has pioneered in the
development of comparative inventories across tropical and temperate sites
and the long-term monitoring of populations and communities in response to
environmental and experimental changes.
Since 1991, he has worked on an Insect Diversity Project to quantify how
climate, biogeography, habitat type, disturbance, land-use, and landscape
fragmentation affect species abundance, diversity, and trophic interactions
of insects in terrestrial ecosystems. He has also been involved in a
large-scale comparative study of insects in old-growth and secondary
forests in Panama, Costa Rica, and eastern North America. The study has
sought to quantify how seasonality, El Niņo cycles, fire, and other
large-scale factors influence insect diversity in time and space.

Dr. Pickering's most important contributions have not come through the
traditional venues of academia but rather have involved using new
technologies to distribute biodiversity information to a multitude of
scientists, students, natural history enthusiasts, and  decision makers
around the world. He is the founder and moving force behind Discover Life,
a web-based information source designed "to provide the technology to
enable an army of scientists, students, and other citizens to work
together, study biodiversity, and share information on a grand scale."
Under his leadership, Discover Life has organized information technology
centers at the University of Georgia and the Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute in Panama, and has already gathered and organized information on
250,000 species. By adding information at a pace of 590 new species per
day, Discover Life is on track to build an on-line Encyclopedia of Life of
a million species by the year 2012. Each month, Discover Life serves
approximately 3 million pages and images to 70,000 IP addresses. Its online
tools include a global mapper that enables users to compare the
distribution of taxa across geographic scales.

In addition to Discover Life, Dr. Pickering has played a major role in
establishing two other major biodiversity initiatives: the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park's All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory and the Polistes
Foundation. The All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory is a massive study
involving scores of scientists and hundreds of park volunteers in a
systematic effort to inventory all of the species in the Great Smokey
Mountain National Park. The Polistes Foundation was established in 2002 "to
assemble and share knowledge about nature in order to improve education,
health, agriculture, economic development, and conservation throughout the
world."

Summary and Recommendations

Judged strictly by the number of courses taught, student credit hours
generated, peer-reviewed papers, and competitive research grants obtained
in the past five years, one could wrongly conclude that Dr. Pickering has
not been as productive in the past five years as in his previous years of
service at the University. However, these traditional measures of academic
success do not begin to quantify Dr. Pickering's overall contributions to
science and education during the past five years.

John Pickering is a truly remarkably scholar who marches to a different
drummer than most academic scientists. Having reviewed his work in the past
five years, the review committee concludes his scholarly contributions,
though unconventional, will likely have more long-lasting impact on
biodiversity science and education than the contributions of a dozen more
traditional scholars. When asked about his long-term goals, Dr. Pickering
provided the committee with a remarkable 20 year plan (see attachment 2),
that includes completing Discover Life's online Encyclopedia of Life and
further developing a powerful new technology that will allow field
researchers and laymen alike to identify, map, and record biodiversity
information anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, Dr. Pickering's contributions, because of their
unconventional nature, have been under-appreciated by the University of
Georgia. He has not been promoted to Full Professor despite his time in
service and he has received substantially below average salary increases
for many years. As a result, he has gotten the message that the University
of Georgia does not appreciate his contributions and, accordingly, he has
withdrawn from participation in faculty governance and has reduced his
undergraduate course participation. He has indicated to the review
committee that he would be willing to participate more in Institute
activities and undergraduate instruction if his participation were
recognized and rewarded.

The post-tenure review committee makes the following four recommendations
aimed at recognizing, developing, and enhancing Dr. Pickering's
contributions to the University:

1)	Recognize that Dr. Pickering's contributions to Discover Life and
related activities are legitimate scholarly contributions that are
appreciated and will be rewarded by the University;
2)	Immediately initiate a review process and solicit outside letters
of recommendation to consider promoting Dr. Pickering to the rank of Full
Professor;
3)	Make an immediate salary adjustment to bring his salary in line
with other faculty with similar time in service in the Institute;
4)	Engage Dr. Pickering more fully in the undergraduate course
offerings of the Institute and ask him to renew his teaching role in
Ecology 3500 making it clear that outstanding teaching contributions will
be rewarded by the Institute.

The review committee feels that these are necessary steps not only to
enhancing Dr. Pickering personal productivity and contributions to the
University but also in sending the message to other faculty that
outstanding contributions beyond the standard ones measured by number of
publications and grants are appreciated and will be rewarded by the
University of Georgia.

Sincerely,


H. Ronald Pulliam
Chair, Post-tenure Review Committee