Courtney Gibbons received her doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she studied homological properties of modules over quadratic algebras. A Connecticut native, Gibbons graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Colorado College in 2006. Her work appears in the Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra and will soon appear in the Journal of Commutative Algebra. She also codes for Macaulay 2, an open-source algebra software package. Gibbons plans to include Hamilton students in her research agenda and to design algebra electives that blend classical theory and modern applications. I teach because I want to help students follow their enthusiasm — especially if that enthusiasm is for math. Too often, mathematics is portrayed as a cold, austere subject. In reality, good mathematical thinking requires creativity, perseverance, teamwork and experimentation. Math is beautiful, but it's also a lot of fun.

My research area is commutative algebra, and I have a special interest in infinite free resolutions of modules over graded rings. Polynomial rings over a field (and quotients thereof) are especially nice because they can be viewed as a direct sum of finite dimensional vector spaces, and the same is true for their modules. These graded rings and modules arise in many settings - and have beautiful properties that make them interesting to study in their own right.