McClintock returned to Cornell for several more years until, in 1936, she accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia from the influential maize geneticist Lewis Stadler. By 1940, however, she believed that she would not gain tenure at Missouri, and left her job. In December 1941, she was offered a one-year research position at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, New York. This job turned into a full-time staff position the following year. In 1967, after 26 years of committed research, McClintock retired from the Carnegie Institution, which awarded her a Distinguished Service Award. She was invited to stay at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a research scientist. She remained affiliated with the laboratory until her death in 1992.