Carla Corbin is interested in the pedagogy of foundation design education and in the cultural landscape, both in real places as well as how they are represented in common media. Contemporary landscape design is also an interest, particularly with focus on relationships between landscape and architecture, and on commemorative places. Currently she teaches design communications media and studio in the CAP Common First Year program, and Urban Design, a fifth year landscape architecture studio.

Her recent work includes an article published in Landscape Journal on the establishment of landscape architecture as a profession in the late 1800s, It is based on discussions in a popular weekly magazine, Garden and Forest, debate that often centered on relationships between landscape practitioners and architects. Her research interest in cultural landscape is agricultural fairgrounds, and she has published articles on fairgrounds as public space, and as spaces of public memory. This past summer she prepared an exhibit on the Indiana State Fairgrounds, which was exhibited in the Ball State Backyard, a pavilion designed and built annually for the State Fair by the Department of Landscape Architecture.

Prior to coming to Ball State, Corbin taught at the University of Illinois, and Cornell University. She is a licensed architect and practiced for a number of years in the Washington DC area, prior to attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design for her MLA.