Natasha K. Bowen started as a professor at the College of Social Work at Ohio State University (OSU) in July 2015. Prior to that, she was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) for 13 years. Dr. Bowen developed the Elementary School Success Profile (ESSP), a social environmental assessment tool for 3rd through 5th graders, with funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse as well as state and local foundations in North Carolina. In her research, Dr. Bowen helps school leaders and teachers use social environmental data to inform interventions that promote student success. Her measurement and intervention research has taken her into over 50 schools in North Carolina and into collaborative relationships with leaders in the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, local school districts, and faculty at the UNC School of Education. At OSU she is beginning to build foundations for similar community-engaged research. A recent focus of her research is on developing additional scales for the ESSP that assess students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors to reduce stereotype threat and promote the growth mindset in the classroom.
Dr. Bowen has taught PhD courses in measurement and structural equation modeling (SEM), and MSW courses on mental health, oppression and discrimination, research, and human development. She has also provided numerous methods workshops at the annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research and at schools of social work around the country.