OSU names new leader for international affairs

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Kendra Sharp, a professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State University, has been named senior advisor to the provost for international affairs.

She will begin the half-time appointment on Dec. 31.

“Kendra will be excellent in her role as OSU’s senior international officer and provide leadership for the development and implementation of strategic university initiatives in global engagement,” said Ed Feser, Oregon State’s provost and executive vice president.

As senior advisor, Sharp will collaborate with Oregon State faculty, academic administration and leaders at INTO Oregon State to advance research and teaching engagement globally, increase the number of international students at Oregon State, and support student success among international learners. Sharp will serve as a member of the provost’s senior leadership team and on a number of working groups and councils charged with advancing the strategic goals of the university.

Sharp is the Richard and Gretchen Evans Professor in Humanitarian Engineering in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and the founder and director of Oregon State’s Humanitarian Engineering Program, one of less than a dozen such academic programs in the U.S.

She has extensive international research and teaching experience including as a visiting researcher at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and as part of the organizing and instructional teams at multi-week international development design summits in India, Pakistan and Thailand.

Sharp also leads Oregon State’s participation in a USAID-funded Partner Center of Advanced Studies in Energy with Arizona State University and two universities in Pakistan, and recently offered a workshop in Islamabad on hydropower.

She received her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.