Katherine wrote several papers but was best known for the time she devoted teaching students about Earth, bussing kids down to the Greene Museum with the thought of a possible Ice Age Scientific Reserve in Wisconsin.

Four years after graduating from Vassar, Nelson attended Rutgers University and became one of the first women to earn a PhD in geology.

[1] In this same year, Nelson was named the first faculty member and chair of the Department of Geological & Geophysical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

[2] In 1978 Katherine was selected as the first woman to ever accept the prestigious Neil Miner award for her contribution the earth science.

[3] In addition, she was the first woman to receive the Neil Milner Award in 1978 for making prestigious contributions to earth science education.

[4] Nelson acted as a tour guide to students when visiting museums and offering information about the field, believing that her work should stem past college-education.

She was influential in the area of preserving glaciers as she explained the importance of Wisconsin's glacial feature to politicians, which would later lead to the establishment of the National Ice Age Scientific Reserve.

Papers of her students were published in a specialized memorial volume of Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Literature.