She has taught at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln since 1994, where she serves as Coordinator of Creative Writing and as a reader for Prairie Schooner.
[1] Bauer was also the recipient of the Sorenson Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities.
[3] While at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Bauer won the Academy of American Poets Prize.
Her other awards include an Individual Artist's Grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, a Diggs Teaching Scholar Award and Women's Research Institute Grant from Virginia Tech, the Irene Leache Poetry Prize, a Nebraska Arts Council Award, and fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
[4][1] In 2015, she was the recipient of the Society of Midland Authors' Award for Poetry for her book Nowhere All at Once.