He went to Middlebury College at Vermont to study classical language and there he received his Artium Baccalaureus in 1915 and completed his master's in 1916.
During his stay at Middlebury, he came in contact with Edward Angus Burt (1859–1939) who was another mycologist, today known as an authority of terrestrial fungi, Thelephoraceae.
After one year of service in the US Army, he worked as an associated chemist in Dairy Division of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
[1] Dodge again joined academia in 1919 as an instructor in botany at Brown University in Rhode Island and took a class in phycology.
[3] During his stay in Harvard, from the mid-1920s he started studying fungal diseases in human and collected a lot of information such that he offered the first course in medical mycology in America.
[1] Some of his students included Edward Cain Berry, George A. Llano, and Emanuel David Rudolph.
[4] During his tenure he visited several Latin American countries, such as Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Chile and Brazil, where he taught several courses in medical mycology and lichenology.
[1] He published articles describing the lichens of tropical Africa,[5][6] Gaspe Peninsula,[7] Venezuela,[8] Brazil,[9] Tonga,[10] Chile,[11] Kerguelen Island,[12] and New Zealand.
Research articles related to Rhizopogonaceae,[19] Gauiteria,[20] Arcangeliella, Gymnomyces and Macromanites,[21] Leucogastor and Leucophlebs[22] were found during his early academic life.
[1] Besides mycology and biology, Carroll William Dodge was interested in Latin American history and literature.
This can be known by his appointment as Harvard University Librarian to purchase literary and historical volumes in many countries he visited.