About Phillip J. Bowman

Phillip J. Bowman

Professor Philip J. Bowman is a theoretical and applied social psychologist whose scholarship focuses on higher education, racial and ethnic diversity, and related public policy issues including workforce inequalities, urban family poverty, health disparities, and social justice.

He received a B.S. from Northern Arizona University in 1970, an M.A. in counseling psychology (1971), an Ed.S. (1973), an M.A. in social psychology (1974), and a Ph.D. in social psychology (1977) from the University of Michigan. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Survey Research Methods in the University of Michigan Institute of Social Research (ISR), he was appointed an assistant professor of education policy, psychology, and Afro-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After going on to faculty positions at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, he returned to U-M in 2006 as a professor in the Marsal Family School of Education where he also was director of the Diversity Research and Policy Program. Between 2006 and 2013 he served as founding director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity.

Professor Bowman’s research has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and state and federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. He has received many awards for his research, teaching, and mentoring, including the W.E.B. Du Bois Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association (2016) and the Charles and Shirley Thomas Award for Distinguished Teaching and Mentoring from the American Psychological Association (2006).

Professor Bowman retired from the university in 2024 as Professor Emeritus of Education.