She earned her Bachelor of Science at Penn State in 1958, her Master of Science in 1961, PhD in 1964 under rural sociologist Robert C. Bealer with a dissertation titled An Exploratory Analysis of Individual and Social Level Meanings of Rurality.
[7] The article was cited by Irene Kirkpatrick and Morag Mitchell in their book Rural Tourism and Sustainable Business.
[2] Her 2009 article "Nonfamily youths temporarily employed in agriculture" was published in the Monthly Labor Review by the Bureau of Statistics.
[11] In 1995, she obtained the Penn State Alumni Association Teaching Fellow Award.
[13] In 2019, the Dr. Fern "Bunny" Willits Graduate Award Endowment in Rural Sociology[14] was established by two former statistics students to honor her contributions to the university and to the discipline of rural sociology, providing worthy Penn State candidates with $50,000 financial aid.