Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Ann Bowman
This fall, the Bush School welcomed Dr. Ann Bowman to the Masters in Public Service and Administration program. While new to the Bush School, Dr. Bowman is no stranger to Texas A&M, having taught in the Department of Political Science from 1979 — 1981, before moving to the University of South Carolina. She was drawn back to College Station by the Bush School's mission of creating principled public servants.
Dr. Bowman earned a degree in political science from the University of South Florida, her master's in government from Florida State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Florida. During her undergraduate years she interned in Washington, D.C. with a Florida congressman and was captivated by the experience, which reinforced her growing interest in government and politics. She returned to USF and promptly changed her major from marine science to political science.
After earning her master's degree, Dr. Bowman worked for the Florida legislature, first as an education policy researcher and later as the staff director for the elections committee. Dr. Bowman found working for the state legislature a place where she could have a real impact on public policy formulation. She was able to experience another phase in the policy process when she accepted a position in county government, where she had to implement state laws. It wasn't too long before she realized that implementing laws was far harder than designing them. Eventually, she returned to school to earn her Ph.D., writing her dissertation on policy innovation in local governments.
While at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Bowman worked on projects in municipal incorporation, economic development, and urban green space. Her research culminated in the co-authoring of two books, Cityscapes and Capital: The Politics of Urban Development (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) and Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strategies, which was published by Georgetown University Press in 2004. Most recently, she jointly authored an article published in Publius: The Journal of Federalism entitled, "You Get What you Pay For: Environmental Policy and Public Health," and another appearing in Political Research Quarterly, "Governors Turn Pro: Separation of Powers and the Institutionalization of the American Governorship."
Dr. Bowman currently holds the Hazel Davis and Robert Kennedy Endowed Chair in Government and Public Service. Earlier in her career, she received a Lincoln Government Fellowship at the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C. and was a Fulbright scholar in Denmark, where she taught American government and politics, occasionally resorting to the computer game Sim City as a teaching tool. She also received the Donald C. Stone Award for Research given by the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society for Public Administration. She serves on the editorial boards of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, and Urban Affairs Review. She also served as a past president of the Organized Section on Public Policy and the Organized Section on Urban Politics of the American Political Science Association. This semester, Dr. Bowman is teaching state and local government and advanced public management courses, and expects to teach courses on environmental policy and management in the fall. She says her teaching style is a combination of seminar discussion and lecture, focusing on getting students actively involved in the learning process.
For more information on Dr. Bowman's educational and work background see the following link: http://bush.tamu.edu/faculty/abowman/
