Teresa Miller (academic)


Teresa Miller is an American professor, author, legal scholar, and educator. She has been a professor of law at the University at Buffalo since 1995. She was appointed as Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion from 2014 to 2017 and later as Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence from 2017 to 2018. She has served as the Senior Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff to State University of New York Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson since February 2018.
Although not currently teaching, Miller specializes in immigration law, prisoner law, criminal law, criminal procedure, contracts, and documenting law in action at University at Buffalo. As a Vice Provost, she established the Office of Inclusive Excellence and created the university’s first strategic diversity and inclusion plan. She also founded the Inclusive Excellence Leadership Council at the university. Additionally, Miller initiated the Difficult Conversations Series in 2016, which invited students, staff, and faculty to come together and share their opinions on controversial topics.

Personal life

Miller was born in Ft. Benning, Georgia on February 20, and raised in the tidewater region of Virginia and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in 1979. Miller has five siblings. Miller is the daughter of a decorated Army aviator, Billy G. Miller, and a school teacher, Henrietta Thomas, who would go on to earn a Ph.D. from UNC Chapel Hill and become a dean.
Miller showed an early interest in photography. She received her first camera for her 16th birthday, became the editor of her college yearbook, and eventually transferred those visual art skills into documentary filmmaking.

Education

Miller attended Duke University from 1979 to 1983, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. In 1986, she earned her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. In 1989, she earned her Master of Laws degree from the University at Wisconsin at Madison and graduated as a William H. Hastie Fellow.

Career

Miller worked as a legal research and writing instructor at the University of Miami School of Law from 1986 to 1988. From 1990 to 1991, she worked as a judicial law clerk at the US District Court in the Southern District of Florida for Judge William Hoeveler.
In 1995, she became a professor of law at the University at Buffalo, where she taught immigration law, prisoner law, criminal procedure, contracts, and documenting law in action.
In March 2014, Miller was appointed the University at Buffalo’s first Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion. In September 2017, she remained in this position but her title changed to Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence. In this role, Miller established the Office of Inclusive Excellence and created the university’s first strategic diversity and inclusion plan, which improved the coordination of diversity and inclusion efforts across campus. She also brought UB campus leaders together by founding the Inclusive Excellence Leadership Council, which met to discuss strategies for improving inclusivity on campus.
Also during her time as vice provost was her launch of the Difficult Conversations Series in 2016. These university-wide discussions invited students, staff, and faculty to come together and share their opinions on controversial topics in a safe and civil environment.
On January 23, 2018, the Office of the Provost announced that Teresa Miller would be accepting the position of Senior Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff to SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson, which is the position she currently holds.

Professional affiliations and memberships

Over the course of her career, Miller has had numerous professional affiliations and memberships. Beginning in 1999 to 2003 she was a member of the Board of Directors, of the Prisoner Legal services of New York. In 2004 to 2008 Miller was a member of the ABA Task Force on Standards for the legal Status of Prisoners. Meanwhile, in 2006 she joined the Board of Directors of the Correctional Association in New York, all the way up to 2013. Then in 2012, she became part of the Board of Trustees for the Park School of Buffalo until the year 2016. She is currently a member and involved in the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education which she became part of in 2015 and part of the Board of trustees for the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo since 2017. A few other affiliations include her membership in the AALS, Minority Law Teachers Section, the Law and Society Association and the Florida Bar.

Documentary and work surrounding prisons

Miller produced and co-directed a 24 minute short documentary titled Encountering Attica in 2009. She co-directed this with a Media studies graduate student. The documentary takes place within the Attica Correctional facility where Miller conducted a study along with three first year law students. The study had a time frame of one year in which the law students came together with inmates that were sentenced to life. The documentary offers different perspectives of experiences within the prison. Miller decided to film her documentary to target a larger range of audience without any experience in film making.
Professor Miller has spent a substantial amount of time working in prisons. Further, she has analyzed the experiences of correction officers in comparison to those of inmates. In 2013, Miller presented a speech at the Buffalo History Museum about life in prisons and her documentary. Additionally, she has served as an advocate and volunteer for prisoners that were sentenced to prison for life. She has also worked with High schools to expose young people to her study of prisons. In her work studying prisons she found that both inmates and prisoners face similar experiences.

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