In 1973 she joined the faculty of Mills College, a women's college in the Oakland hills near Berkeley. In 1974 she founded the mathematics and computer science department at Mills, at that time the only computer science program at a women's college. She served as the head or co-head of the department for 13 years. From 1975 to 1978 she served as the third president of the Association for Women in Mathematics. In 1979 she was awarded an endowed professorship, the first Letts-Villard Chair at Mills.