In 2009, the Bush School welcomed Dr. Ann Bowman to the Masters in Public Service and Administration program. Dr. Bowman was 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 (USF) and her PhD 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 PhD, 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.

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.

She has been president of three organized sections of the American Political Science Association (APSA): Public Policy, Urban Politics, and Federalism/Intergovernmental Relations and has been Book Review editor for the Journal of Politics and Urban Affairs Review. Currently, Dr. Bowman is a member of the editorial board of State and Local Government Review, the Advisory Council of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, the Executive Council of the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of ASPA, and the Advisory Committee for the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research’s summer program.