For the next ten years she attended as well as taught at the Teachers College, Columbia University, where she received a B.S.
Under the direction of William Heard Kilpatrick, professor of philosophy of education, her dissertation on the personality adjustment of schoolchildren earned her a Ph.D. in 1929.
Her interest in psychology and its message to teachers prompted her to travel to Vienna in the 1930s where she studied under the psychiatrist Carl Jung.
From 1934 to 1939 she led the study of adolescence for the Commission on Secondary School Curriculum of the Progressive Education Association.
In 1942 she was appointed director of the Bureau of Child Guidance of the New York City Board of Education that lasted until her death three years later in 1945.