In 1940, Bauer accepted a position as Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Social Welfare. During the 1940s-1950s she lectured and lead seminars at Harvard University, Cornell University, Mills College, and University of Wisconsin, and in 1950 joined the department of architecture at University of California, Berkeley. After her marriage to San Francisco area architect William Wurster, whom she met while teaching at UC Berkeley in 1940, both withstood accusations of disloyalty by the Tenney Committee during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Bauer Wurster contributed to the establishment of University of California, Berkeley's UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design and was also involved in founding the progressive architectural research group Telesis.