He was a founder of the Southern Regional Education Board, served on the 1960 panel that recommended to John F. Kennedy the creation of the Peace Corps, and designed the University of South Florida.
He briefly worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority, before returning to the University of North Carolina in 1947, where at 28 years old he became the youngest full professor in that institution's history.
At the same time, Ivey resisted attempts by segregationist politicians to turn the SREB into an instrument to circumvent racial desegregation.
After two years at NYU, Ivey left to join the faculty at Michigan State University, where he became dean of the College of Education in 1961.
While at Michigan state, he founded the Learning Resources Institute, which promoted the use of multimedia in education, and the Midwest Project on Airborne Television Instruction, which broadcast courses to rural schools via airborne transmitters in the same manner as satellite television would in the future.