In 1925, he moved to Yale University as professor of psychiatry and taught until 1931 when he returned to Philadelphia to resume teaching at Jefferson Medical College.
In 1932, he accepted an appointment as professor and chair of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Medical College, where he remained until retirement in 1952.
During World War I, Strecker entered the U.S. Army at the rank of major and served as a divisional psychiatrist in France.
Strecker played a major role in American psychiatry as a teacher, and he consulted for numerous government agencies and organizations.
While Strecker's early publications were based on descriptive psychiatry, his later monographs and articles included the contributions of psychoanalytic theory and practice in the understanding and treatment of mental illness.