She was allowed to sit-in on a chemistry class after meeting with the college president Frank S. Kedzie, who had been a friend of her father's.
[1] After graduating and sending out dozens of applications, she only received one job offer: in Chicago as an assistant to the garden designer, Jens Jensen.
[1] During the early 1920s, she developed a close friendship with P. J. Hoffmaster, Superintendent of State Parks (1922–1934) and later Director of the Department of Conservation.
Beginning in 1924, she helped locate and raise public support and funding for parks at Ludington, Hartwick Pines, Wilderness, and Porcupine Mountains.
Other parks included Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, the Huron-Clinton Metroparks system, and what was to become the P. J. Hoffmaster State Park in the sand dunes area of Lake Michigan between Grand Haven and Muskegon.