Raegan Higgins, Ph.D. Department Chair and Professor

Raegan Higgins, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Texas Tech University, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2008. She previously served as Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Recruitment and Hiring in the Office of Faculty Success, leading the university’s faculty recruitment process and supporting transparent, comprehensive, and accessible policies and procedures for recruiting and retaining excellent faculty members. She joined the Office of the Provost in 2021 as a faculty fellow, focusing on identifying and addressing barriers to faculty advancement, before stepping down to take on the department chair position in 2026.

Higgins’ research focuses on the calculus of time scales, a framework developed to unify and extend results for differential and difference equations. Her work focuses on oscillation criteria for certain linear and nonlinear second-order dynamic equations, with additional interests in applications of time scales to mathematical biology and in issues affecting pre-service teachers’ ability to teach mathematics.

As a woman of color in STEM, Higgins is deeply committed to educating, training, and mentoring women in mathematics. She is a longtime leader in the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Program, which supports women’s success and leadership development in graduate mathematics. She also served as lead Principal Investigator for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LS-AMP) Bridges Across Texas grant, helping strengthen undergraduate students' ability to successfully complete degree programs in the mathematical sciences.

Higgins currently serves as President of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). She is an AWM Fellow and a recipient of the AWM Gweneth Humphreys Award for Mentoring and the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America's Ron Barnes Distinguished Service to Students Award.

Higgins earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, summa cum laude, from Xavier University of Louisiana, and her master’s and doctorate in mathematics from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Research Interests

Time Scales; Dynamic Equations; Ordinary Differential Equations

Education

Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln