[3][4] In 1900 he started his academic career as assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Michigan State College, and continued at various universities and educational institutions[5] Late 1900s Diemer established the first course in industrial engineering at Penn State University,[6] where he was recommended by Frederick Winslow Taylor.

In 1909 Penn State established the Department of Industrial Engineering, with Diemer appointed as its first head.

[7] In 1920 Diemer was appointed Director of Management Training at LaSalle Extension University, Chicago, where he served until his death in 1939.

Almost without exception the authors of the works listed were engineers, who "have added to their technical training and experience the essential knowledge of accounting and of economics, requisite to a comprehensive grasp of the problems of factory management.

"[13][14] In total Diemer's 1904 bibliography listed 27 works by two dozen authors, and gave a short description of each publication.

This biography was limited the description to some on the works of scientific management by Taylor and Gantt, and additional gave a listing of about 300 publications in the field.

Noted efficiency expert Frederick Taylor recommended that university president James A. Beaver hire Hugo Diemer, a professor from the University of Kansas, in the hope that Diemer would create an industrial engineering curriculum at Penn State.

A two-year option was ready by 1908, and a four-year bachelor's degree program emerged the following year, the first of its kind in the world.