Phebe Scofield began her career at the State University of Iowa as a math instructor after working for many years as a math teacher in the Davenport city schools. Scofield is included on an 1880 record of University faculty, with her instructor salary listed as $900. That same year she rose to become an Assistant Professor of Mathematics, a promotion which, we hope, raised her salary to match that of Assistant Professors William Preston and Thomas Macbride (spelled McBride in the salary list), both of whom received $1,200. (The same 1880 salary list documents that English Professor Phebe Sudlow received the same salary as her male peers.) A University souvenir volume dating from 1882 introduces Scofield with this observation: “The field of work which has been allotted to women at the State University is an honorable one, and the way in which it has been filled is creditable to the sex.”
Source: Souvenir and annual for 1881-1882 Comp., ed., and pub. by J. F. Hoover, H. S. Kneedler and C. J. Faust. p.41