College of Education Professor Nicholas A. Bowman was recently named as a recipient of the 2026 Mid-Career Award from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA).
Presented by the NASPA Faculty Council, this award is given to a faculty member who has been full time for seven to 15 years and has distinguished themselves in research and teaching.
Bowman, who is the Mary Louise Petersen Chair in Higher Education and professor in the college’s Higher Education and Student Affairs program, is proud of this latest accolade and grateful for the colleagues and collaborators who helped him reach this milestone.
“I’m very excited and honored to receive the NASPA Faculty Council Mid-Career Award, especially since NASPA is one of the leading professional organizations in student affairs and higher education,” says Bowman. “I appreciate the fact that this award is designed to recognize a broad range of activities, including research, teaching, mentoring of students and early-career faculty, and service to the field.”
According to the NASPA Faculty Council, Bowman is being recognized for his “impactful scholarship, teaching, and service that continue to shape the field and elevate student learning and success.” He will be formally recognized for the award at the 2026 NASPA Conference, March 7-11, in Kansas City, Missouri.
“I’d like to thank Jodi Linley, Ken Brown, Lauren Irwin, Lindsay Jarratt, and Shinji Katsumoto for nominating me,” says Bowman. “I also want to thank the many wonderful students, colleagues, and research collaborators with whom I’ve engaged—my 15 years as a faculty member have been fun, meaningful, and productive because of them.”
Just getting started
Adding to his strong start in 2026, Bowman was also recently ranked on the Top 200 Education Scholars list by Rick Hess Straight Up (RHSU) Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, a widely cited list of influential education scholars published annually by Education Next and Education Week.
Using proprietary metrics to calculate how much these U.S. university-based scholars contributed to public discussions of education, RHSU produces the list annually. Tied at 124, Bowman is the only College of Education professor ranked in the top 200.