After spending most of his student years at Berkeley, Kirchner had come to view the San Francisco area as a second home. The Mills College position in Oakland, therefore, brought with it the attractive opportunity of living again in the Bay Area. Moreover, Mills, a selective liberal arts college for women, was known for its cutting-edge programs in the arts. Lou Harrison, John Cage, and Henry Cowell taught there in the 1930s, and Darius Milhaud began his thirtyyear tenure on the faculty in 1940. Although undergraduate programs at Mills were restricted to women, the graduate programs (including master’s degrees in music) were open to both men and women.

At first Kirchner sensed that Milhaud was not overly enthusiastic about his arrival. Nevertheless, the distinguished Frenchman and his wife, Madeleine, organized a welcoming cocktail party, and the two composers soon developed a good relationship. Actually, beginning in 1947, Milhaud only taught at Mills every other year; he spent the alternate years in Paris where he taught at the conservatory. Because of this arrangement, he and Kirchner shared the same composition students. During the years when Milhaud was in residence, Kirchner focused on harmony, counterpoint, and analysis. Together they cultivated a number of young composers and performers, many of whom would have successful and prominent careers, including David Del Tredici, Morton Subotnick, Stanley Silverman, Ezra Sims, Richard Wernick, and Cheryl Seltzer. When Kirchner was interviewed by Time magazine during the summer prior to taking up his new duties at Mills, he said: “I shall write and I shall teach. When I teach I shall try to do one thing: I would like to show my students what I have learned from men like Sessions and Bloch and Schoenberg.” Powerful, concise, and very challenging to accomplish, this brief statement of purpose would continue to serve Kirchner well throughout his long teaching career.

Although Kirchner apparently had not anticipated it from the outset, at Mills he would add a third component—performance, especially conducting—to his projected emphasis on composing and teaching. The Mills performance program was not fully developed, and thus it offered him a good opportunity to nurture his growing conducting ambitions.