[2] She completed her Ph.D. in 1983 at the University of Notre Dame; her dissertation, Heterogeneous Algebras Associated with Non-Indexed Algebras, a Representation Theorem on Weak Automorphisms of Universal Algebras, was supervised by Abraham Goetz.
[4] In 2009 she became director of Project NExT, after the previous director, T. Christine Stevens, stepped down; this project is an initiative of the Mathematical Association of America to provide career guidance to new doctorates in mathematics.
[5] Higgins is married to Bill Higgins, a mathematics professor at Wittenberg University, and the two regularly take their sabbaticals together in California.
[6] Higgins won a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America in 1995, for her contributions to undergraduate research.
[1] In 2005 she was one of three winners of the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics of the Mathematical Association of America.