For Carol Padden, a career in education seemed inevitable: “My parents were both professors and my brother is a school principal,” she says. “Teaching has been a family business for as long as I can remember.”

Padden, who has been in the “family business” for 25 years, is a professor in the Department of Communication. Excited by the prospect of being able to help build a fledgling department from the ground up, she joined the Communication faculty, shortly after receiving her Ph.D. in Linguistics from UCSD.

“I couldn't pass up the opportunity to be a part of developing a new department dedicated to critical studies of human communication,” she says. “My interest in topics that extend beyond linguistics to culture and communication has always been well-served by the department. I really appreciate UCSD's commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration because it's unlike other campuses.”

Padden's interest in language and culture developed early on, influenced by her parents and her upbringing. Born deaf to deaf parents, she grew up using American Sign Language and spoken language to communicate and became drawn to the field of linguistics as a way to study how language is expressed in different modalities.

“My mother was an English professor at a small college, so from her, I developed a deep interest in language and its expressive forms,” she says. “I've always been interested in the details of human language, however, from how it's structured to how it's used. It's fascinating.”

While Padden's research has generally been about the interaction of human language and culture, her most recent work has focused on understanding how language evolves and changes over time. As part of her research, she and her colleagues have been studying a new sign language that appeared three generations ago in a community of hearing and deaf Bedouins.

“New sign languages are incredible opportunities to watch a sign language unfold 'in the wild,'” she says. “We can see how it comes into being among real people living in a society of language users.”

Passionate about her research, Padden is equally enthusiastic about sharing her findings and insights with students, both graduates and undergrads.

“Teaching is a perfect complement to my research,” she says. “My students tell me what I don't yet know about my subject, and in so doing, help me discover a different way to answer a question, or find a different approach to a vexing problem.”

But teaching is not without its challenges. In addition to being able to make sometimes arcane ideas and issues come to life for students, Padden must also be able to communicate with her students. As one of the only two deaf signing faculty in the UC system—her husband, Tom Humphries, a UCSD Communication and Education Studies professor is the other—Padden uses spoken English when teaching her classes but relies on a sign language interpreter to translate questions from students. Rather than an impediment, her hearing loss has become a way to draw out a different perspective in the classroom.

“I find that most of my students don't know much about sign language or deaf people so they learn from my own example,” she says. “After 25 years of teaching at UCSD, I've learned how to anticipate questions my students may have, and make my presence a part of the teaching experience.”

But despite the challenges of teaching, Padden can't imagine doing anything else.

“I truly believe university teaching is one of the most rewarding careers anyone can choose,” she says. “To be able to research issues that fascinate me, to learn about students who go on to pursue careers involving human language, to see that I've had an impact beyond the university—it's very gratifying.”