Challenges and Roadblocks
Sally Miller did have close friendships with some faculty members outside her department like Donna Baker and she enjoyed working with others like Jake Jacoby and Malcom Moule. However, she faced many challenges and roadblocks duirng her time at Pacific. She was discriminated against for being a woman and for being a lesbian. Much of this discrimination was not said outright, but it was still very tangible. She was not welcomed to Pacific like she should have been. She was also ostracized by her department for about 20 years. On her evaluation for promotion she was told that she did not mix well within the department and had to fight to get that sentence removed.
She had to put in a lot of unpaid time to get programs like gender studies off the ground. She put in the work becuase she truly cared about the program.
She also describes that students became less invested in education as a whole and more interested in specifically getting a job. Miller describes that she had to change the curriculum of her Immigration History class the most as the University became interested in offering classes that focused on diversity. One of her classes, American Intellectual History, eventually had to be removed because students did not want to discuss the ideas central to the class.