After a short time as an assistant biologist at the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station in 1897-98, Barlow assumed a faculty position teaching biology at
Fairmount College in
Wichita, Kansas, from 1898 to 1901. Barlow returned to
Kingston, Rhode Island, to stay in 1902 when he accepted the positions of Professor of Zoology and chairman of the Department of Zoology at the
Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. He remained as chairman of the Zoology Department for over 35 years. He was a respected entomologist who had built up the entomological collections of the college and was known to his students as "Buggy Barlow". In 1930, he was named Vice-President and Dean of Men near the end of the presidency of
Howard Edwards. In 1931, he added the title of Dean of the School of Science and Business to his portfolio. During this period, he was appointed for two terms as interim president from April 1930 to March 1931 and again from March 1940 to October 1941 when another presidential vacancy with the resignation of
Raymond Bressler. Barlow officially retired from the college on his seventieth birthday, November 27, 1942, and he died on November 26, 1944, at Baptist Hospital in
Brookline, Massachusetts. ==Family and legacy==