 Coffey had resigned from the Bureau in 1911 to join the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, and it would remain for Curtis F. Marbut to bring Dokuchaev's ideas to prominence.Coffey was awarded a Ph.D. in Geology from the George Washington University in 1912 with a thesis titled "A Study of Soils in the United States".While at Wooster, Coffey performed studies on erosion in Ohio.