engineering

Sherra Kerns

Sherra Kerns is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sherra Kerns rather than just read about it. In short: Sherra E. Kerns (née Horan) is an American physicist, engineering educator, and academic administrator who is the F.W.

Key takeaways

Sherra Kerns belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sherra Kerns to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sherra Kerns from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sherra E. Kerns (née Horan) is an American physicist, engineering educator, and academic administrator who is the F.W. Olin Distinguished Professor Emerita of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the founding vice president for innovation and research at Olin College. She was president of the American Society for Engineering Education from 2004 to 2005.

Early life Kerns moved from rural Texas to the New York City area when she was in sixth grade. She completed a B.A. in physics from Mount Holyoke College. She received a master's degree in high-energy physics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Kerns earned a Ph.D. in solid-state physics from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her 1977 dissertation was titled, An Internal Friction Study of Impurity Defect-Dislocation Interactions in AgBr:Cd++ and AgBr:Sr++ Single Crystals. Lawrence Meyer Slifkin was her doctoral advisor. She completed postdoctoral studies in the department of biomedical engineering at Duke University as a National Institutes of Health fellow.

Career Kerns was a faculty member at Auburn University and North Carolina State University. At Vanderbilt University, she was the departmental chair of electrical and computer engineering. From 1989 to 1999, Kerns was the director of the University Consortium for Research in Space. She was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1999. Kerns joined Olin College in 1999 as its founding vice president for innovation and research. She researched microelectronic circuits and space electronics systems. From 2004 to 2005, Kerns was president of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). She is a fellow of the ASEE. Kerns was promoted to the F.W. Olin Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering on September 1, 2007. She won the Gordon Prize in 2013. She is a professor emerita.

Personal life Kerns is married to electrical engineer David V. Kerns Jr.. They have three children. In the 1970s she was an international breeder of longhair cats as co-founder of Miversnit Cattery, which produced new color series in Persian and Himalayan cats. In the 1980s she applied her expertise as a feline geneticist to conservation efforts at the Carolina Tiger Rescue, caring for and working with many varieties of African and Asian big cats including tigers, lions, and caracals.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sherra Kerns

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sherra Kerns claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sherra Kerns before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sherra Kerns ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sherra Kerns

In research: Sherra Kerns appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sherra Kerns in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sherra Kerns is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century American engineers, 20th-century American women engineers, 21st-century American engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sherra Kerns outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Sherra Kerns” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Sherra Kerns in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sherra Kerns means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sherra Kerns out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sherra Kerns in simple terms?

Sherra E. Kerns (née Horan) is an American physicist, engineering educator, and academic administrator who is the F.W.

Why does Sherra Kerns matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sherra Kerns?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sherra Kerns.