The Bowen Institute for Policy Studies in Higher Education exists to facilitate academic activity in the area of public studies, understood broadly to span both public policy and system/institutional policy in higher education.
The institute supports conference attendance and research opportunities for students in higher education. It sponsors the annual Howard R. Bowen Lecture, the Daryl G. Smith Diversity Lecture, and the Sally Loyd Casanova Lecture when presented by an outstanding higher education alumnus.
The institute also supports Higher Education Abstracts, published quarterly by Claremont Graduate University. This is a compilation of abstracts from journals, conference proceedings, and research reports that focuses on college students, faculty, and student services.
The institute houses the Jack H. Schuster archives, which contain research materials and publications that drive more three decades of scholarship on the American academy and faculty careers. Schuster’s impressive corpus of work on these topics intersects with Howard Bowen’s scholarship and includes several internationally recognized collaborations that have shaped the professoriate in the United States and abroad.
About Howard Bowen
The Bowen Institute is named in honor of Howard R. Bowen, the R. Stanton Avery Professor of Economics & Education at Claremont Graduate University. A scholar of economics and an authority on the economics of higher education, Bowen joined the CGU faculty in 1969, bringing with him a remarkable record of service in government, business, and higher education. In 1970, Bowen became president and then chancellor of Claremont University Center, serving four years in that capacity before returning to the classroom in 1974.
Bowen’s book The State of the Nation and the Agenda for Higher Education received the Ness Book Award, given annually to most significant contribution to studies on liberal education published during the preceding year. Another book, American Professors: A National Resource Imperiled, co-authored with Schuster, also received the Ness Book Award.
In tribute to Bowen following his death, Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, described Bowen as “the moral mentor for all of us” and “the Chief Justice of American Higher Education.”