Howard Bowen Papers

Collection

Identifier: RG05.0001.012

Staff Only
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Scope and Contents

Since the Walter Jessup administration in 1916, the President's Office has maintained an index of Presidential Correspondence in the form of a Kardex file to which name and subject entries are posted. A new alphabetical sequence is begun approximately each fiscal year. These cards files have been photocopied and a bound copy is available in the University Archives; these primary files are not yet available on-line. They are, clearly, essential to tracing correspondence on specific subjects.

The Kardex entries consist of the name or subject and reference to a folder number (which may change from year to year for a particular subject although in a short span of years it often remains the same). To find the current physical location of the referenced folder, readers must consult the photocopied Kardex entries, note the number of any folder they wish to review, and then determine from the list which follows the number of the storage box in which the folder has been placed. Please note that folder numbers are not necessarily sequential in Archives holdings, and some folders may have been withdrawn from the sequence by the Office of the President.

Dates

Creation: 1964 - 1969

Creator

Bowen, Howard R. (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Biographical / Historical

The fourteenth president of the University of Iowa, Howard Rothmann Bowen was born in Spokane, Washington, on October 27, 1908. He received his B.A. degree from the State College of Washington in 1929, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Iowa in 1933 and 1935, respectively. He and his wife, Lois, raised two children.

Mr. Bowen held a variety of academic and government positions before assuming the university presidency in 1964. From 1935 until 1942, he was a member of the faculty of the University of Iowa's College of Commerce. During World War II, he was employed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and served as chief economist for the U.S. House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees. In 1945, he joined Irving Trust in New York as an economist. From 1947 until 1952, he was a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois and served on the Williams College faculty in Massachusetts from 1952 until 1955. He returned to Iowa that year to become president of Grinnell College, a post he held until 1964, when he was named University of Iowa president.

In 1969, he joined the Claremont Graduate School in California as a member of the economics faculty, serving as the school's president and chancellor from 1970 to 1974. At the time of his death he was a professor emeritus at Claremont. Howard Bowen died on December 22, 1989.

D. Anderson, March 2005.

Extent

67.25 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Nineteenth president of the University of Iowa, 1964-1969.

Method of Acquisition

These materials were transferred to the University Archives from the Office of the President at various times between 1975 and 1978. Inventory by Xuefan Sun, July 1996. Guide posted to the Internet 2000; revised December 2006.

Related Materials

Bowen, Howard R. Academic Recollections. Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education and American Council on Education, 1988. 155 pp.

Bowen, Howard R. "Oral History Interview." University of Iowa Oral History Project, 29. 49 pp. 1977.

Solberg, Winton U., and Robert W. Tomilson. "Academic McCarthyism and Keynesian Economics: The Bowen Controversy at the University of Illinois." History of Political Economy 29 (spring 1997): 55-81, notes. Howard R. Bowen and George D. Stoddard.

Bowen was also the author of numerous articles and monographs pertaining to economics.