Dave Bowman, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at PSU, brings a refreshingly vibrant energy to academia. Drawing from his roots in a tiny, one-stop-sign town, he opens up about a professor who changed his life, and his deeply personal mission to champion underdog students.
Watch the video or read the full interview below to learn more.
RGH: How do you start your day?
DB: Well, I usually start my day with a cup of tea, which is brewing right now on my desk. I do the New York Times Wordle and Connections. It's a ritual. I have to do that every day. I actually know how long I've worked here because the last Wordle I got wrong was in my first week on the job. So I got a pretty good streak going.
RGH: And what are you most passionate about?
DB: I love working with students at my job. I love student success. That's kind of why I'm a dean — to be able to do those kinds of things. But I have passions that go on in so many different areas. I love music. I love classical music. I'm really passionate about science and learning, and new kinds of things and really being in an environment where I can have good friends that I work with to make the world a better place.
RGH: And what was your favorite school subject?
DB: Well, I'm a science guy and so I loved all of my science classes. But the thing that made the biggest difference in my life was when I took a class on cultural geography and immigration. It really changed so much of what I understand about our world, our economy, social justice, ideas that I had never thought about at all. It really opened my eyes to different topics that affected me really strongly. And I don't remember the name of the professor that taught that class, but whoever that nameless geography professor was that I had 40 years ago, he really changed my life in an important way and I will never, ever forget that.
RGH: How do you spend your free time?
DB: I love to play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). My wife and I play D&D at a couple different places here in Portland. We still play online with some friends back in Spokane where we used to live. I also like high power rocketry. I build really big rockets and fly them up a few thousand feet. It's a lot of fun. It gets my brain going and using a lot of my technical skills. We model what the flight's going to be like on a computer and build all the electronics to make it fly correctly. And usually it works, sometimes it doesn't. And that's always exciting too. But most of all, it's a chance to go hang out with a bunch of my friends who also still play with rockets and have a lot of fun.
RGH: And where did you grow up?
DB: I sort of grew up all over the place. My father worked for Mobil Oil, but on the refinery side, so we bounced around a lot. I'm originally from Buffalo, New York. And I lived there till I was 11. I still have a lot of family back there. That's where I get my passion for ice hockey.
I went to junior high in Bellingham, Washington, and lived there for a few years before going to high school in a small town in rural Illinois. Living in a small town in Illinois during the later half of junior high and also high school was very formative for me. A lot of who I am is informed by that. Growing up in a small town where most people didn't go to college. When I eventually went to Los Angeles for college, it took me a while to realize that when you look at a room number for going into a building, the first number is actually what floor you go to.
And so it really gave me an appreciation when I moved to the big city about how tough it is to make that change if you don't have that kind of a background. And so a lot of how I think about my job now is informed by remembering what it was like to be a lost 18-year-old who doesn't have a family with a history of going to big four-year universities. And that's been really important to me to understand and empathize with our students, because many of them here are like that too.
RGH: What's your favorite thing in your office?
DB: My office is actually filled with things that are little trinkets from my life. Some good things. Some bad things. I want to share this one that I keep here because it's a wonderful story. This is a plaque that was given to me by some students from when I was a faculty member teaching geology and they were a great group of kids. It was in a general education geology class and these students wanted so hard to get it, but they were just struggling.
And I would say on my first midterm, "If you didn't do well, come to my office hours. You're paying me to be in my office hours. Use it. I guarantee if you go to the office hours, you will pass the class."
And this group of students took me up on it and they came every single week to my office hours to understand the lecture, to understand the homework, and they struggled so hard day in and day out. But in the end, they stuck to it and they went through the finals and all of them passed and most of them actually got A's and B's.
I love this plaque that they gave to me, because they so appreciated me working with them to help them succeed and get through the class. They wanted to show their appreciation, but it's kind of emblematic. They didn't even get my name right. And I just love that. I just love that so much because they tried so hard. They cared so hard. They were so passionate. They just needed a little extra help.
RGH: And what inspired your career the most in life?
DB: Well, so I grew up in the '70s and it was after we'd landed on the moon, but I always remember every day with Saturday morning cartoons, it would start up with a shot of the Saturn V rocket taking off. And I just remember every Saturday that rocket taking off was like, "Oh wow, that's so cool."
And it stimulated an interest in space that I had. And my dad, even though he wasn't college educated, he was really into science and we would watch Nova and National Geographic every time, every day we'd watch together as a family. And it really encouraged this lifelong fascination with science and we loved taking vacations as a kid. We'd go out to visit all the national parks and it was just so inspiring that it just kept creating a sense of awe in me of the natural world and my parents really encouraged that.
And so when I went off to college it was obvious to me that I wanted to be a scientist. And so I started out working in space. I did planetary geology for a while before I started working with earthquakes and I was very lucky, very fortunate to be able to allow my curiosity to keep following where my interest was and it was very fortunate to be surrounded by people that encouraged that.
RGH: Now a sillier question. If you could shrink down any animal and carry it around in your pocket, which one would it be?
DB: When I was a little kid, maybe two or three, my aunt decided that I needed to have a collection. She went to Disney World and loved the Dumbo ride. And so she bought me a Dumbo doll and decided that she was going to make sure that I had an elephant collection all my life. At every birthday, every Christmas, any holiday, everybody would give me elephants. And by the time I was in high school, I had literally hundreds of elephants everywhere. So I have to say, in honor of my aunt, if I was going to have any animal to shrink and carry around, it would have to be an elephant. There's a couple elephants over here too. I don't have much of a collection anymore, but I still have a few sprinkled around.
RGH: And what advice would you have for students who are pursuing a degree in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences?
DB: There's a few things. Talk to your faculty. They're such an important resource. They're here to help you succeed. You should always talk to them if you have any questions. No question is a bad question. I know for myself when I was in high school, I was always the smart kid that didn't have to study to do well on my tests and I got A's without having to work on it. And when I went to university, everybody else was like that too. I wasn't the smartest kid in the room anymore. I was just another kid in the room and it was really hard for me, especially going to a really small high school. My high school only had 400 students.
And so when I went to university that was huge with thousands and thousands of students there, I got lost and I would be in my math class, and they would start talking about things and I had no idea what they were talking about. And I was always afraid to raise my hand and ask a question, because I thought they would think I was dumb and that it would hurt my grade and they would think poorly of me. So I didn't ask questions and I just struggled and did poorly. I actually failed math the first time I took it in college and I'm a scientist, a physical scientist. It was devastating. And the reason why was that I wasn't supposed to know how to do it. They were teaching us hard things that I didn't know and that was the point. And instead of using the stuff I didn't know to learn and grow and asking questions to clarify going to office hours, I bottled it all up inside and didn't succeed.
And it wasn't till I had a faculty member who was fantastic and said, "You need to come to my office hours and I'll make this clear for you," that I learned how it's actually supposed to work and did better as a student. And so I think that's so important and that's a value that I've brought with me as a faculty member and as a dean. We don't expect you to know how to do this. If you knew how to do this, you wouldn't need to be here. So use us as that resource, whether it's your faculty member, whether it's your dean, we're here to support you, use that.
RGH: Is there anything that you wanted to mention that we haven't covered yet?
DB: The other thing I would really encourage students to do is to get involved in something. A club, a research project, join the orchestra, do something outside of your classes. And I know that's tough. I know we have a lot of students that are working, they may have families they're supporting. We all have really busy active lives. I totally understand and respect that, but so much of the college experience is more than just your classes. College is about an experience, not a piece of paper that you get at the end. And the experience, the journey is the point. And the journey gives you other opportunities like clubs and organizations, undergraduate research, scholarship opportunities, study abroad, all of these things that you have access to, do them. Students that do those things are the ones that really succeed well. We know that nationally, not just here at PSU.
So I really encourage students so much, engage with your work outside of class. That's where the real learning goes. I went to a great undergraduate university. I know I went to classes, but I don't really remember much of my classes, but I remember every club I was in. I remember every student organization I was part of. I remember all those things and the friends, and the relationships that I built in those extracurricular activities I still have to this day. They're friends and colleagues that have traveled with me on our academic voyage together and I still call on for help and support. And so that's what college really does for a student. Like I say, it's not just a piece of paper at the end, it's the experience, experience it.