[2] She did her undergraduate studies at Colorado State University, entering as an engineering student but switching to a double major in mathematics and humanities.
[3] She graduated in 1981,[4] served in the Peace Corps teaching mathematics in Bambari in the Central African Republic from 1982 to 1984,[5] and in doing so discovered her love for teaching mathematics.
Her dissertation, Random Reals, Cohen Reals and Variants of Martin's Axioms, concerned set theory; it was supervised by Richard Laver.
[4] In 2015, Barnett won the Burton W. Jones Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of the Mathematical Association of America.
[2] In 2017, she won one of the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, for excellence in teaching reaching beyond her own campus.