After a stint as president of Marietta College, he spent the latter part of his life teaching in Hawaii and working for the World Brotherhood, an international organization founded under the auspices of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
[1] A 1945 biographical sketch described him as having been a "West Virginia farm boy who dared start Harvard University with only $50 in his pocket, insufficient credits", and went on to complete "four and a half years' work .
Serving during a period of rapid post-war growth, he worked to expand the school's enrollment and physical plant.
[7] Shimer became embroiled in personal controversy after he was divorced from his first wife, and a year later married Dorothy Blair, the college's dean of women.
The controversy was covered in the national media, and ultimately led to the board of trustees' July 1947 decision to force him from office, despite expressions of support from faculty, students, and townspeople.
[3] Along with many articles over the years,[3] Shimer wrote a book entitled Conscious Clay: From science via philosophy to religion, published in 1948 by Charles Scribner's Sons, in which he argued for the existence of God as "the eternal all-inclusive reality".