Allen earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1975 from the
College of St. Scholastica, and a master's degree in 1978 and doctorate in 1978 from the
University of Tennessee. Her dissertation,
Applications of Differential Inequalities to Persistence and Extinction Problems for Reaction-Diffusion Systems, was supervised by Thomas G. Hallam. After working as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, she joined the faculty of the
University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1982, and then moved to Texas Tech in 1985. ==Recognition==