Carol is a Lecturer Emeritus in the Department of Theatre Arts, where she served as an acting lecturer from 1991-2019.

Before coming to Iowa, she was Guest Artist Director at Princeton University where she taught acting in the Program of Theatre and Dance; she also taught in the English Department and in the Humanities Program. While teaching there she was profiled in Ken Macrorie's Twenty Great Teachers.

She has been a Visiting Artist Scholar for the National Endowment for the Humanities and has conducted workshops throughout the U.S., Japan, Russia, and India. In 2001, she directed her translation of Chekov's The Seagull and in spring 2002 toured Steven Dietz's Nina Variations in Moscow, in Melikhovo at the International Chekhov Festival, and in St. Petersburg at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, the first Americans to perform in Russia's oldest theatre.

Since 1982, she has spent her summers teaching acting at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English, where in 2005 she was named the Eleanor and Frank Griffith Professor Literature. She also taught at the high school level for nine years in New Hampshire where she was named Teacher of the Year.

In 2006, she was a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College where she taught and directed Dreaming Biloxi. She directed Antigone 2.0, co-authored with Jen Silverman.