Correção de frase: very intellectually competent

I need to revise this text and, somehow his sentence sounds quite strange. "A ... Professor, apparently very intellectually competent, disagreed firmly that she was responsible for everything she was going through." I think the order or combination of words is wrong, but I'm not sure. Would it be better to say: "quite competent in what concerns her intellect" and "firmly disagreed"? Help!