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   Gary L. Bowen, Ph.D., A.C.S.W.
   Principal Investigator, SSP
   Co-Principal Investigator, ESSP
   Kenan Distinguished Professor,
      School of Social Work, UNC-CH

Dr. Bowen is a Kenan Distinguished Professor in the School of Social Work at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Dr. Bowen received his MSW in 1976 from UNC-CH and his Ph.D. in Family Studies in 1981 from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Dr. Bowen currently co-directs the School Success Profile (SSP) project in the School of Social Work at UNC-CH with Dr. Natasha Bowen and Dr. Jack Richman. The two student-level assessments that have emerged from this work, the School Success Profile and the Elementary School Success Profile, have been administered to approximately 75,000 students in nearly 1,000 schools and youth-serving agencies. These assessments address students’ beliefs about their social environment—neighborhoods, schools, friends, and families—and about their own physical and psychological health and school performance. The entire SSP or parts of the SSP have been translated into Spanish, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Romanian, Portuguese, and Korean. Working with his doctoral students, Dr. Bowen recently developed the School Success Profile Learning Organization to assess schools’ organizational readiness for innovation. The development, psychometric testing, and use of these assessment tools have been supported by a series of grants from the BellSouth Foundation (1992–1997), the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (1995–2006), the William T. Grant Foundation (2003–2006), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (since 2000). SSP-related publications have appeared in Family Relations, Journal of Family Issues, Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, Evaluation and Program Planning, Educational and Psychological Measurement, Journal of Adolescent Research, Research on Social Work Practice, Social Work, and Social Work Research.

Dr. Bowen’s honors include the National Graduate Student of the Year Award in 1981 from the National Council of Family Relations and an Alumni Pacesetter Award in 1998 from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s School of Environmental Sciences “for actively making a difference in the lives of others and the world around them.” In 2001, he was identified as a National Council on Family Relations Fellow for his enduring contributions to the field of family studies through a career of teaching, scholarship,outreach, professional service and leadership. Dr. Bowen received the “Most Innovative Professor Award” in 2002 from the Social Work Student Organization at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; in 2005, 2006 and 2007, he received the Dean’s Recognition of Teaching Excellence, which recognizes faculty members whose student teaching evaluation scores consistently remain among the highest of the faculty. Dr. Bowen serves as a member of the distinguished Research Council for America’s Promise, and he is President-Elect of the National Council on Family Relations.