[5] Sharp started his academic career as an associate professor at Iowa State University.

Sharp made a significant contribution to the international history of the Great Plains and the Canadian-American West.

[7] Although Agrarian Revolt later would be recognized as a pioneering work of scholarship crossing the Forty-Ninth Parallel, in its time it was little appreciated.

[8] Whoop-Up Country was well received, but Sharp, in retrospect, never thought reviewers and readers fully appreciated its revisionist cast.

He intended the work to be a critical test, in the borderlands of Montana and Alberta, of Walter Prescott Webb's thesis of environmental determinism.

He let UNC Chapel Hill in large part because of the ambiguity caused by lack of clear definitions and dinstictions between the role of the UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor and the University of North Carolina president.

During this time he lobbied heavily for the state legislature to increase funding for higher education.

[13] After stepping down as head of the University of Oklahoma due to health issues, Sharp worked for 10 years as the Regents Professor of history and higher education at that institution.