 from Columbia University Teachers' College in New York City (1910).When her brother John died, Ida returned to China to be with her family and became a teacher and principal of Wai Ling School for Girls in Chefoo (1912–1918).In 1918, she came back to the United States and studied social work in Boston and Philadelphia until hired by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York as head of the Department of Social Services at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) where she remained until 1938.