Barbara A Kerr, PhD

Barbara Kerr, Ph.D., is the Williamson Family Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology and Co-Director of the Center for Creativity and Entrepreneurship Education at the University of Kansas. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. Dr. Kerr is the author of seven books, including A Handbook for Counseling Gifted and Talented; Smart Girls in the Twenty-First Century; Smart Girls: New Psychology of Girls, Women, and Talent Development; Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood, and the...See more

Barbara Kerr, Ph.D., is the Williamson Family Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology and Co-Director of the Center for Creativity and Entrepreneurship Education at the University of Kansas. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. Dr. Kerr is the author of seven books, including A Handbook for Counseling Gifted and Talented; Smart Girls in the Twenty-First Century; Smart Girls: New Psychology of Girls, Women, and Talent Development; Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood, and the Search for Meaning; Letters to the Medicine Man: The Shaping of Spiritual Intelligence; Counseling Women: Ten Years of NSF Gender Equity Studies and is editor of The Encyclopedia of Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent Development and Major Works in Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent Development. She has written more than 150 articles and papers on the topic of guiding and nurturing talent. Her research ranges from case studies of inventors, artists, writers, and architects to large-scale studies of students who attained the highest scores on the ACT college admissions test. She is a winner of the NAGC Torrance Award for Contributions to Creativity, the Esther Katz Rosen Award for Research in Gifted Education, and she is an American Psychological Association Fellow, named one of the 25 most influential psychologists in the study of giftedness by APA. Dr. Kerr currently directs the Counseling Laboratory for the Exploration of Optimal States (CLEOS), where creative students learn to navigate the invisible pathways to creative careers, and is co-director of the Lawrence Creates Makerspace, where artists and technologists innovate together. Previously, she was on the White House Science Advisory committee on Makerspaces, Project Director for National Science Foundation Gender Equity Programs, Psychologist at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Associate Director of the Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education at the University of Iowa and director of the Guidance Laboratory for Gifted at the University of Nebraska. See less