 She taught at the Linguistics Department of the University of California, San Diego from 1965 to 1991, where she served as chair of the department from 1985–1988.She was advisor to 17 graduate dissertations in linguistics, addressing such languages as Navajo, Palauan, Mojave, Havasupai, Seri, and others.Among her students at UCSD were linguists Pamela Munro, Leanne Hinton, Cheryl Hinton, Steve Elster, and Loni Langdon.