AFT Vice President
Bowen, an associate professor of English at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, was elected president of the Professional Staff Congress in 2000.  PSC represents 17,000 faculty members and professional staff at the City University of New York.  Bowen, a respected scholar who has published numerous articles and books in her field, is also an experienced union organizer.

 A former VISTA volunteer, she began her union career when a VISTA assignment turned into an effort to organize 800 tobacco pickers in the Connecticut River Valley.  Her record of labor activism includes working with cranberry pickers in Cape Cod and loggers in Maine; while obtaining her Ph.D. at Yale, she helped organize clerical workers at the university. 

She served two terms as chair of the PSC chapter at Queens College before being elected president of the union in 2000.