Alex J. Bowers is a professor of Education Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he works to help school leaders use the data they already collect in schools more effectively to direct limited resources to specific student needs. His research focuses on the intersection of effective school and district leadership, organization and HR, data-driven decision-making, student grades and test scores, and student persistence and dropouts. His work also considers the influence of school finance, facilities, and technology on student achievement.
Professor Bowers studies these domains through the application of data science and big data analytics, such as data visualization analytics, multilevel and growth mixture modeling, and cluster analysis, heatmap, and data dashboards.
He earned his Ph.D. in K–12 Educational Administration from Michigan State University, and, prior to teaching and educational research, spent a decade as a cancer researcher in the biotechnology industry, with an M.S. in Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology and a B.S. in Biochemistry.
Professor Bowers is a faculty advisor to the Harvard Strategic Data Project and currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of Educational Administration, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and the Journal of Education Finance. In 2019, Professor Bowers served as a Thomas J. Alexander Fellow at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris, France.
As co-principal investigator, Bowers co-leads both the Implementation study C, which seeks to document what equity-centered leadership practice looks like in schools, and the Exploratory study E (CALL-MEI), discussing design and proposing a study to measure the impact of equity-centered leadership in schools.