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Colonel
Thomas G. Bowie Jr.
Permanent Professor 1999–2004
B.S., United States Air Force Academy
M.A., University of Denver
Ph.D., Brown University
Tom Bowie, the Academy’s 66th Permanent Professor, was born in 1954 in Seattle, Washington. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in the Class of 1976 with a Humanities major and was named the Outstanding Cadet Group Commander that year. He went on to undergraduate navigator training at Mather AFB, CA, where he was a Distinguished Graduate in 1977 and won the Husik Trophy for top flight performance. Tom then flew as a Navigator and Bombardier in Strategic Air Command, and also served in various staff positions at Fairchild AFB, WA, and K.I. Sawyer AFB, MI. In 1979 Tom was a member of the top bomber crew in the command, taking first place honors at the annual bombing and navigation competition. At K.I. Sawyer in the early 1990s, he directed the wing’s flying training program and helped establish the Strategic Weapons School at Ellsworth AFB, SD. Tom left Fairchild AFB in 1982 to pursue his Master’s degree in English at the University of Denver, which he earned in 1984. His thesis explored perceptions of history in Southern American literature, focusing on the legendary writer Robert Penn Warren. Tom then taught in the Academy’s Department of English from 1984 to 1986. During his time at the Academy Tom also taught basic navigation to cadets, flying as a Staff Instructor Navigator on the T-43 navigation training aircraft. He is a Master Navigator with over 2,500 flying hours in the B-52 and T-43 aircraft. He returned to school in 1986 and earned his PhD in English Literature from Brown University in 1989. Tom rejoined the faculty of the English and Fine Arts Department from 1992 to 1998, and then attended the Air War College at Maxwell AFB, AL. He was appointed a Permanent Professor and Head of the English and Fine Arts Department in 1999. Tom served during his final year as Permanent Professor at US Northern Command, Peterson AFB, CO, 2003–2004, as Chief of Homeland Defense Plans (a position established in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001) and Chief of Policy. Tom is an authority on the literature of war— his research and publications focus on the human dimension of conflict, on personal narratives that bear witness to modern war, and on the journey toward reconciliation that inevitably follows such conflicts. For over a decade he was editor of War, Literature, and the Arts, an international journal of the humanities. He retired in 2004.
Following retirement, Tom joined the faculty at Regis University in Denver as Director of their Honors Program, where he redesigned the curriculum around team-taught interdisciplinary classes. In 2011 he co-authored a highly successful grant for integrative faculty development, and then served for three years as Director of the Regis Integrative Teaching Institute. He became the Academic Dean of Regis College in 2014.