At Columbia University, Dunbar was an acknowledged intellectual leader of her class. At Columbia University, she was instrumental in the beginning of consultation-liaison psychiatry. While at Union Theological Seminary, Dunbar was awarded the Travelling Fellowship for the outstanding student and used this opportunity to travel to Europe in 1929 and visit with both Helene Deutsch and Felix Deutsch in Vienna, and with Carl Jung at the Burghölzli, the psychiatric clinic of Zurich University. She also trained with Anton Boisen (1876-1965), a co-founder of the Clinical Pastoral Education Movement, at the Worcester State Hospital in the summer of 1925.