However, Cha made full use of the short time he had at Grinnell. He participated in the Chinese students’ celebration of the founding of the Republic of China in October 1918 (SB 10/16/1918) and in November 1918 co-hosted the visiting Chinese educators, among whom was Zhang Boling, the President of his other alma mater, Nankai. He played guard on the basketball quintet organized by K. C. Lee (SB 02/16/1919). In June 1919 he also joined a big cohort of Grinnell students to attend the YMCA conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (SB 06/11/1919), apparently right before transferring to Chicago. 

Cha received a bachelor’s degree from Chicago in 1920 and an M.A. from Teachers’ College, Columbia University in 1922. He was chairman of the executive committee of the Chinese Students’ Committee at the Washington Naval Conference (aka The Pacific Conference, 1921-1922), which aimed to renegotiate issues left unresolved from the Paris Peace Conference following World War I. He returned to China in July 1922 and by 1924 became Professor of Education and Dean of Studies at Peking Teachers College (Peking National Normal University since July 1923). In 1928-1929 he served as President of Henan University but soon resigned to join relief efforts following the 1930 drought in Shaanxi province and the 1931 flooding of the Yangtze River. From 1934 on he worked at various educational institutions. In 1939, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, he became Dean at the Associated Southwest Universities in Kunming, Yunnan.  

In fall 1949 Cha went to India to attend a UNESCO conference, during which period the defeated Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. Cha remained in India for a time, serving as a visiting professor at the University of Delhi in 1950, while his wife and children were left behind in mainland China, never to be reunited with him. In 1954 he became Professor of Psychology and Dean of Students at Taiwan University in Taipei. Cha passed away in Taipei in 1982.