[4] Dederer taught at Barnard College and worked in the Zoological Laboratory at Columbia until 1917.

[5] After 1917, she served on the Board of Fellows at Connecticut College and was made a full professor of biology there in 1922.

[6][7] In 1922, Dederer was a member of the Field Investigators Training Corps of the Eugenics Record Office.

[8] She made headlines for teaching an undergraduate course in genetics in 1930, which included eugenic advice about marriage and children.

"Our girls go out from this course with critical knowledge of the salient facts, an interest in human genetics, and a realization of its importance in relation to psychological and social problems," she explained.