[1][2] His thesis, titled Normsets and Rings of Algebraic Integers, was overseen by Shankar Sen.[3][4] Coykendall's teaching career began the next year at North Dakota State University, where he was named James A. Meier Professor in 2003.
[9] Coykendall has made significant contributions to research in commutative algebra, particularly in the study of factorization properties of rings and ideals.
He presented his work on Normsets and Factorization Properties of Rings of Integers at the 1996 Spring Southeastern Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society in Baton Rouge.
[10] His research has been widely published, and he has co-authored articles such as Sets with Few Intersection Numbers from Singer Subgroup Orbits, which appeared in the European Journal of Combinatorics.
[11] According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, Coykendall has supervised 16 doctoral students, contributing to the academic growth of the field.