In 1915, she was awarded a PhD in zoology from Berkeley, with her dissertation titled The Kinetonucleus of Flagellates and the Binuclear Theory of Hartmann.

In 1921, Swezy was acknowledged as a co-author on a 583-page work entitled The Free-Living Unarmed Dinoflagellata, which was based on two decades of research.

In its report to the president of the University of California, the Zoology Department referred to the book as "the most significant single progressive event" of that year.

[1] Throughout the 1920s, Swezy continued to collaborate with Kofoid, publishing papers on a variety of subjects related to his applied zoology projects.

[1] Swezy and Kofoid discovered that amoebas caused dysentery, and that it is similar to when American troops were in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.

[2] In 1924, Swezy and Kofoid studied amoebae that are able to enter the body of a human by traveling into water or food that has been contaminated.