Azenabor’s UWM Course Evaluations Show 17 Years of Student Concern

For nearly two decades, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students expressed grave concern about Professor Anthony Azenabor’s behavior in and out of the classroom. They alleged he plagiarized past students’ work, didn’t respond to emails regarding important matters, and belittled and humiliated students in the classroom.

“Azenabor is an awful instructor. I do not recommend any of his courses to anyone. I cannot honestly say if he has any mastery of the material because I cannot understand a word of what he says, it sounds like his mouth is full of food,” wrote one angry student in summer 2018. The negative comment is part of a pattern.

“He does not clearly outline what I am supposed to learn, and does not convey his expectations effectively. He is unwilling to answer student questions,” the student continued. “He thinks he is smarter and better than all of his students and it is very discouraging. He does not promote an environment that is conducive to learning whatsoever…He also quizzes on information that is not presented in class. I really wish he wasn’t a professor.”

In 2016, another student wrote a similarly harsh comment.

“If I could request my money back I would! This class is a complete waste of my money and my time. First of all Dr. Azenabor’s thick accent makes it virtually impossible to understand what he is saying during lecture. If you have questions too bad, Dr. Azenabor doesn’t know the answer and will tell you to ‘Google it.’… His attitude is degrading, he acts like his job is an imposition, and such a hassle. He treats students with complete disrespect, he even denied a disabled student her right to take her test in the testing center. He then made this same student cry, by yelling at her for inconveniencing him because she kept fighting for her right to take her test. I cannot fathom how or why this man is a teacher, HELP!”

The now former tenured professor stands accused of three counts of sexually assaulting one of his graduate students in the basement of Enderis Hall on campus. Azenabor, who previously declined to comment when approached by a Media Milwaukee student journalist at the courthouse (and whose lawyer has not responded to calls seeking comment), has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges. A jury trial is scheduled for August. Azenabor was fired from his position with the university on April 30 by the UW System Board of Regents in the wake of the criminal accusations, Media Milwaukee has learned.

However, a Media Milwaukee review of all of his UWM teaching evaluations – obtained through open records laws – shows that students had raised serious questions about his teaching for years. He was often under the department average. As opposed to sites like “Rate My Professor,” which only cover a sampling of students, Media Milwaukee was able to obtain all available evaluations for Azenabor’s entire career at the university. The reasons for student concern covered many areas; in 2010, a student wrote in a teaching evaluation: “I feel uncomfortable in his class on how he talks to people, especially women.”

Student unhappiness with Azenabor can be found throughout all of the years he spent at UWM. Sprinkled throughout the pattern of negatives are some positive remarks. You can read all of the evaluations yourself at the end of this article. Read more about UWM students’ opinions on the value of course evaluations here.

“I cannot believe you would not give us feedback on the first exam! How are we supposed to know how to prepare for the next exam,” read a comment from another student on an Azenabor evaluation from the Medical Parasitology and Mycology class in the summer of 2005. “It was a rotten, rotten thing to do! You are the worst instructor I have ever had at three major universities.”

Even so, Azenabor, 59, a researcher of virology and immunology, was promoted twice in his more than 17 years in UWM’s College of Health Sciences. In 2006, he was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor, a tenured position, according to documents obtained by Media Milwaukee through open records laws. He received full professor status in 2011. He was promoted by two different deans of the college, both of whom are no longer a part of the university. One of those deans, Chukuka Enwemeka, later stepped down as provost of San Diego State University in 2018 following an email controversy.

Time and time again, officials involved in promoting Azenabor did not respond to or declined student journalists’ requests for comment.

The course evaluations came from 99 biomedical science classes taught by Azenabor from 2001 to 2018. UW-Milwaukee has a policy mandating evaluations, but not what departments must do with them or how they should be written, Media Milwaukee found. In other words, there is no uniformity in how departments evaluate teachers.

To give you a flavor of what’s contained in the evaluations, student journalists with Media Milwaukee read some of Azenabor’s evaluation comments (from other students) out loud. You can listen here:

“People that teach should love teaching and want to grow the knowledge of their students, not try to demean and put them in their place. If you cannot or will not improve yourself, your lectures or your attitude, you have no place in the educational system and please, kindly remove yourself from your position.” Those sentences came from a student’s evaluation of Azenabor’s spring 2016 Advanced Lectures in the Clinical Laboratory Sciences class. The student wrote a detailed, 10-sentence evaluation.

“I want my money back! I tried emailing our program director Cindy Brown for help. She responded that the situation had been resolved. Well, I would like to tell her he might have agreed to her terms, but he never executed or followed through… I will be emailing the dean next,” said a student from Azenabor’s Medical Parasitology and Mycology class in the summer of 2016. (Media Milwaukee reached out to Cindy Brown but didn’t receive comment.)

“The instructor did not answer questions, instead made comments such as: you should have paid closer attention,” read another evaluation.  

The Provost Responds

Media Milwaukee presented UWM Provost Johannes Britz with the 99 course evaluations. He studied them briefly and hesitated.

“Yeah, this is just not good,” he said.

“What should happen with a full professor that gets these reviews, the hope would be, from my perspective, the executive committee conducting a thorough review would say there’s an improvement plan needed,” Britz said.

“It’s very difficult to fire a tenured member,” UWM Associate Vice Chancellor Dev Venugopalan explained to Media Milwaukee. “You have to catch them before they get tenure.”

On the morning of March 4, 2019, UWM Chancellor Mark Mone sent a university-wide email in reaction to news of Azenabor’s arrest, saying, “UWM took actions previously to preclude Professor Azenabor from having any contact with UWM students.” However, Media Milwaukee is still waiting for numerous documents and answers to questions it has sought from the university. Among those questions: When campus officials first learned about the allegations against Azenabor. Among those documents: Any internal complaints and decisions against him. The university now says it needs to send a “Woznicki” notice to Azenabor before it can release those documents, in accordance with state law.

“The Office of Public Records is finalizing the records and preparing a ‘Woznicki’ notice,” UWM Open Records Custodian Kathryn Amato said on May 1. “Pursuant to Wisconsin law, certain record subjects are entitled to receive notice before a record is released. The record subject is given a period of time to challenge the release of the records.”

The evaluations show: Azenabor was asking for students to pay closer attention to him, while students had been trying to get the department’s attention to take action against Azenabor for years.

Azenabor’s Course Evaluations

Responding immediately to the criminal complaint, student journalists with Media Milwaukee requested the course evaluations from the current chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Jennifer Doll. From there, students were directed to the university’s public records custodian, Kathryn Amato, for all matters regarding Professor Azenabor.

Open record requests were filed for every course evaluation, his curriculum vitae, informal and formal complaints and any performance reviews. Azenabor’s course evaluations and CV were received, partially redacted, two-and-a-half weeks after they were requested.

From 2011 to 2018, a Media Milwaukee analysis found, Azenabor averaged a 3.3 with 5 being the highest regarding a variety of questions, including: command of the subject matter, his openness to student ideas and questions, and whether the material was presented in a way that allowed students to understand and utilize important concepts of the course. Nearly every quantitative evaluation average was bumped up due to high marks in course organization and adhering to the course syllabus. In some cases, only a few students took the evaluations.

The department average was much higher – 4.13.

The numerical scores don’t tell the full picture.

Prior to 2011, the Department of Biomedical Sciences did not request quantitative evaluations of Azenabor, asking instead for simply explanatory thoughts on the course and the instructor. It was free rein for students to express their concerns for their professor who was seemingly seen so differently by the department’s executive committee. Some classes only had quantitative evaluations with no chance for students to comment. After 2011, the department sought both numerical scores and qualitative comments.

In 2009, another student wrote: “Dr. Azenabor refused to show me my exam when I requested to see it. I’ve never had a teacher refuse. I wanted to know the answers I got wrong. I felt this was very unprofessional of him and we should be entitled to see our own graded work.”

While some students provided positive comments on his courses and conduct (one wrote in 2007: “Dr. Azenabor always does a great job!” by way of example), they were drowned out by the explicit and repetitive detail of the negative. Of his 99 classes taught, 15 percent of his classes received satisfactory ratings based on written sentiment, a Media Milwaukee review found.

Reading through the 99 evaluations, you could spot trends early on. For the years with numerical scores, there wasn’t dramatic improvement or decline in his teaching over time. The patterns were pretty consistent.

Multiple evaluations detailed lectures being accompanied by PowerPoint presentations allegedly completed by past undergraduate students. The details of the evaluations state you could download the PowerPoints on D2L, an online learning platform utilized by most universities, and see the original students’ names listed in the file. Allegedly, Azenabor would eliminate the title page to the presentation and veil them as his own, students wrote.

Many evaluations mentioned his thick accent, making it very difficult for students to understand him. When students had questions regarding the lectures, he’s alleged to have belittled and humiliated them for not knowing the information and making inappropriate comments. One evaluation even called him a “sexist pig.”

While it isn’t uncommon for professors to include their published work as the textbook for the semester, the students noted the grammatical errors and poor formatting made it unfit for a class text. “Immunology for the Medical Sciences” is currently listed on Amazon with one review from 2016: “I would give this book zero stars if I could write a review without giving it any.”

While protocol for course evaluations may vary by department, the evaluations mandate the instructor must leave the room (or offer them online), with someone other than the instructor delivering the completed evaluations to the department. There were evaluations stating that Azenabor never left the classroom when students completed evaluations.

Criminal Charges Ensue

A student described being troubled when Azenabor vanished from the classroom. A fall 2018 evaluation said, “The most bizarre part was when, with three weeks left of class, Professor Azenabor was replaced. We had no heads up that a new professor was going to be involved. Thus, creating a very drastic change toward the end of the semester.”

He was removed from the classroom in November of 2018, according to this student, which Media Milwaukee confirmed with UWM’s spokeswoman.

In January 2019, the State of Wisconsin filed a criminal complaint in Milwaukee County Circuit Court against Azenabor, accusing him of two felony counts of second-degree sexual assault by use of force and a misdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault. The complaint alleges three alleged instances of sexual contact without consent from March to May of 2018, with unwanted touching beginning in September 2017.

The accuser stated in the complaint that her hesitation to come forward was due to a fear she wouldn’t be awarded her PhD. Allegedly, Azenabor told her to “not spread lies about him” after one of the assaults. A second graduate student has come forward alleging similar conduct by Azenabor.

Media Milwaukee reached out to UWM’s Senior Director of Integrated Marketing & Communications Michelle Johnson regarding the employment status of Azenabor and was initially met with silence. The UWM College of Health Sciences web page listed Azenabor for nearly the entire spring 2019 semester. Johnson did inform us he was not being paid, without stating if he was fired or whether he was suspended.

Then, on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, Johnson answered Media Milwaukee’s request for reasoning as to why Azenabor was removed from the UWM website after the link to his profile showed it was gone.

“The UW System Board of Regents ordered Anthony Azenabor dismissed yesterday. That ends his employment at UWM,” the email read.

Azenabor’s 23-page CV notes a Masters in Biochemistry and a PhD in Pathologic Microbiology from the University of Benin in Nigeria. He received post-doctoral training at the same university, then at the University of Waterloo and McMaster University, both in Ontario, Canada, and finally at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Azenabor’s extensive research has focused primarily around immunology, virology and chlamydiology, the study of the sexually transmitted infection, Chlamydia.

His research plays into the university’s prestigious R1 status: an award offered by the “Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. UWM’s R1 status ranks [UWM] in the top 131 out of more than 4,300 eligible universities for this prestigious recognition,” according to Chancellor Mone’s public announcement on April 22, 2019.

According to his CV, Azenabor received the $200,000 Shaw Scientist Award from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation in 2003, a 20-year honor. He was also a 2005 and 2016 Fulbright Faculty Associate for the US Department of State–where distinguished American scholars conduct research or lecture abroad. He was the 2004 Dean’s Research Award Winner in the College of Health Sciences at UWM.

Faculty Reaction

The tenure process at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is an elaborate one. UWM Provost Britz sat down with Media Milwaukee and explained the process begins with the department’s executive committee proposing tenure of an individual after a filtering process: a review of their research, teaching and service. A different provost, Rita Cheng, signed off on Azenabor’s tenure in 2006, but Britz approved his full professor status in 2011, even writing “well done!” on the memo. Cheng is now at Northern Arizona University and did not reply to a request for comment.

“Teaching evaluations is a critical key to any promotion,” Britz said. “If you don’t do well in teaching, they may say this is your last year.”

Post-tenure reviews happen after five years of achieving tenure. While Britz notes research is 40% of the puzzle, teaching is a critical component. Faculty might not get renewed if they fail their teaching portion.

Azenabor received tenure in 2006. Due to the ongoing investigation, we are unable to obtain those personnel files explaining if he ever had a post-tenure review in the 12 years that followed.

In an attempt for comment from the current Dean of the College of Health Sciences Raymond Fleming, Media Milwaukee scheduled a meeting with his secretary, then received a denied meeting notification with no explanation 30 minutes later. When Media Milwaukee called for explanation, we reached voicemail, and no one returned the call.

Former Dean Randall Lambrecht, the current president of Aurora Research Institute, promoted Azenabor to associate professor, thus giving Azenabor tenure. He did not reply to a request for comment, either.

Chukuka Enwemeka, the former dean of CHS, left for a provost position at San Diego State University in 2014. He quickly replied, “The record should show that the person you referred to was tenured long before I joined UWM. Please address your question concerning tenure with those who made the decision then.”

That said, Enwemeka was the Dean of the College of Health Sciences in 2011 when Azenabor was promoted to full professor, a lifetime position. When asked if course evaluations got enough attention in that decision process, he said he was not able to discuss confidential matters.

Enwemeka stepped down as provost at SDSU in 2018 following a request for an early performance review that was met with this email reply saying his boss would be “showered with unending curse” and “visited by evil a million fold.” It’s unclear if this email caused his resignation from that post.

Current Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences Jennifer Doll requested that all matters regarding Azenabor be addressed to the UWM Director of Integrated Marketing & Communications Michelle Johnson or Public Records Custodian Kathryn Amato.

Former Chair Jeri-Anne Lyons did the same. She was chair of the department in 2011 when Azenabor was promoted to full professor.

Professor Emerita and former Chair Mary Madsen did not respond for comment. She was chair in 2006 when Azenabor was promoted to tenure.

Evaluation Process

UWM has a campus-wide policy mandating course evaluations must be extended to students; however, the questions vary from college or department. In an attempt to understand the evaluation process in different colleges around campus, we met with other department chairs and professors.

UWM’s Associate Vice Chancellor Dev Venugopalan explains that any instructor in the college of engineering & applied sciences – from a teaching assistant to professor – gets course evaluations from their students. If an instructor’s average falls below a 3.5 on a scale from 1 to 5, the executive committee of the college will address the concerns, asking them to create an improvement and development plan to remedy the situation

“Change happens if it’s motivated from inside,” he said.

These are the course evaluations of Anthony Azenabor leading up to his promotion to tenured associate professor in 2006.

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On the flip side, the current Chair of the College of Health Sciences Kristian O’Connor says that evaluations are complicated.

“Course evaluations are just one piece of the big puzzle,” O’Connor said. “We take them with a grain of salt because we have a 10% return rate of them from students.”

Professor Gregory Jay, the chair of the English Department, offered some thoughts on how his department deals with evaluations.

“Students give high numbers, but express a lot in the comments,” Jay said. “When we start to see patterns, that’s when we start taking steps to a different approach.”

Student Reaction

Media Milwaukee interviewed UWM students who expressed their concerns for course evaluations going unnoticed. We asked broad questions to students from different programs regarding their history in completing evaluations and asked their opinion of how they should be handled. Then we asked for their comment on our findings on Azenabor’s evaluations.

“There should be transparent, disciplinary actions for professors who have consistently low evaluations,” said Harold Blye, a junior in the communications program.

“Obviously the university cares more about the professor’s research, but students don’t care,” said Kendra Bisping regarding Azenabor’s evaluations. “They want professors who can actually teach and as a professor’s job, they should be able to do both adequately.”

“Comments are usually a better measure to see what is wrong anyways,” the psychology student said. “Students that actually have serious problems will leave comments rather than going off a scale.”

“He [Azenabor] obviously shouldn’t be teaching,” she said.

“Numbers should be taken out of student evaluations because, like an algorithm, it doesn’t say much like actual views and experiences,” Joe Petham said. The film major believes professors have the position to do as they wish, but they should also be mindful of how students feel.

“Departments should use evaluations for what it sounds like they should be used for, evaluating professors,” said Sarai Tenorio, a freshman marketing major.

“No one is going to listen to students. Your parents are just going to blame you for your grade, so if the department doesn’t care, who will?” she said.

We know Azenabor is slated for an August 2019 jury trial for his three counts of sexual assault; we don’t, however, have any reaction from the department of biomedical sciences regarding the years of course evaluations from students that were seemingly left unanswered.

Please read all 99 course evaluations of Anthony Azenabor Media Milwaukee obtained through open records requests.

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Marla Smith, Kynnah Neal, Ty McNulty, Megan Zemple, Dazia Cummings, Malana Perkins and Jodie Filenius contributed to the research of student and faculty reaction.