His first position involved teaching French phonetics and phonemics at the University of California, Los Angeles. After leaving UCLA, Pimsleur went on to faculty positions at the Ohio State University, where he taught French and foreign language education. At the time, the foreign language education program at OSU was the major doctoral program in that field in the U.S. While at Ohio State he created and directed the Listening Center, one of the largest language laboratories in the United States. The center was developed in conjunction with Ohio Bell Telephone and allowed self-paced language study using a series of automated tapes and prompts that were delivered over the telephone.