CU Physics Professor Steve Pollock, who I had the pleasure of learning from as an undergraduate, was named a 2013 U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. This a great honor for CU and Steve, but Boulder Weekly use the occasion to write several articles hammering CU for nearly not granting Steve tenure because of his lack of physics research productivity (http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-11944-two-cu-articles-on-pollock-mysteriously-disappear.html, http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-11943-curss-professor-of-the-year-traveled-a-rocky-academic-road.html). While I will be the first to admit that teaching should be re-prioritized at big research universities, these article struck a chord with me as they highlighted Steve and his colleagues’ research in physics education. Since Carl Weimann won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, he devoted most of his time to building CU into a world-class center for teaching undergraduate physics and many other professors have followed suit. While I applaud efforts to modernize physics education and believe the PhET applets (http://phet.colorado.edu/) are a spectacular teaching tool, I’m feel strongly that physics research should be done in the physics department and education research should be done in the education department. It is now possible to get a doctorate in Physics researching physics education at CU (http://phys.colorado.edu/research/physics-education-research) and many professors in the physics department now only perform physics education research. I strongly believe that a degree in Physics is the most fundamental quantitative background one can achieve and, while education research is extremely valuable, it devalues the quantitative Physics brand established through centuries of discovery.