At the time of her death, she resided at the Alterra Assisted Living facility in Flint, Michigan. Marie's parents came to the United States from Hungary in the early 1900s. They were teachers, and her father knew several Eastern and Central European languages. Initially interested in chemistry, Marie found her interests turning to psychology, and she received her bachelor's degree and master's degree in clinical psychology at The Ohio State University. Flexible scheduling at Ohio State allowed her to combine the requirements for an undergraduate teaching degree and a graduate clinical psychology degree in order to prepare for a career in school psychological services; she received both degrees in June and August of the same year, 1931. Marie's competence in Hungarian facilitated her travel and study in Hungary on an International Exchange Fellowship in 1931. Skodak received her doctoral degree in developmental psychology in 1938 from the University of Iowa. Mentored by Goddard at Ohio State and initially influenced by hereditarian positions on intellectual development, her point of view changed to an environmentalist position, especially on mental retardation, during her work at Iowa and the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station.Marie served as assistant director of the Flint (Michigan) Guidance Center from 1938 to 1942 and as director from 1942 to 1946. The center was privately funded and was part of a movement to offer mental hygiene assistance to children and families. She worked in private practice (one of only two persons in Michigan, and the only woman in the state, to do so at that time) for a few years providing evaluation and consultation services to schools, parents, agencies, and physicians. She also taught part time for the University of Michigan. Following a brief stint as a part-time employee for the Dearborn schools, she became director of the Division of Psychological Services there from 1948 until her retirement in 1969. She continued her private practice as a consulting psychologist in Flint throughout her career in Dearborn. She identified her subspecializations as intelligence and measurement of intelligence, school psychological service administration, mental retardation, special education of the mentally deficient, infancy, and assessment.Marie became an American Psychological Association (APA) member in 1938 and was a fellow of Divisions 7 (Developmental Psychology), 12 (Society of Clinical Psychology), 13 (Society of Consulting Psychology), 16 (School Psychologists; the division's name was changed to School Psychology in 1969), 17 (Counseling Psychology), and 33 (Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities). She served as president of Divisions 17 and 23. She also served as a member-at-large to the Division 16 executive committee for the 1960-1961 term and as its representative to the APA
