After receiving her doctorate, Newlin taught at Western Maryland College and then at Syracuse University. She returned to work with Schoenberg in the summers of 1949 and 1950, and around this time she decided to write his biography and received a Fulbright grant to research his early years in Vienna. She spent a year in Austria, and also performed in Paris, lectured on American music, and made recordings with violinist Michael Mann. She also performed the piano part of her Piano Trio, op. 2 in Salzburg at the 1952 Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music.