William G. Bowen

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William G. Bowen is a senior research associate at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation where he served as President from 1988 to 2006. He was the president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988.

William Bowen graduated from Denison University in 1955, and Princeton University in 1958, where he earned a PhD. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1958, specializing in labor economics.

In 1988, he left Princeton and joined the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he created a research program to investigate doctoral education, collegiate admissions, independent research libraries, and charitable nonprofits in order to ensure that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's grants would be well-informed and more effective.

William Bowen has also been partially responsible for JSTOR, the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, ARTstor, and Ithaka Harbors, Inc..

Bowen has authored 19 books, including the Grawemeyer award-winning The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (co-authored with Derek Bok. His most recent book, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education (2005), was coauthored with Eugene M. Tobin and Martin A. Kurzweil. Bowen's current research project involves a study of graduation rates at selective public universities in the United States.

[edit] Positions held

Academic Offices
Preceded by
Robert F. Goheen
President of Princeton University
19721988
Succeeded by
Harold T. Shapiro
Preceded by
John Edward Sawyer
President of Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
19882006
Succeeded by
Don Michael Randel