Despite getting better established by 2010, there were still many challenges that the program faced, but also milestones that the program was able to achieve. There is an oral history interview with Dr. Terese Monberg that talks more about this.
Challenges to the program continued even several years after the establishment of the APA Studies Program. In the following video, Dr. Terese Monberg talks about working under a Dean who was not very enthusiastic about the APA Studies program and who frequently challenged the APA Studies faculty to articulate their value. Because of Dr. Monberg's background as a rhetorician, she tried to rise to the challenge by focusing on building external relationships that can strengthen the position of the program at MSU, such as through building bridges with other ethnic studies program to learn from how they were able to establish stronger presence and relationships among faculty and staff across campus. Other issues that Dr. Monberg talked about having to navigate was building a curriculum with faculty who are not able to offer courses on a regular bases as many faculty's main appointments were in other departments and programs. Watch Dr. Terese Monberg, former director of the APAS Program (2017-2019) talk about how she worked to navigate these challenges on behalf of the program.