A new fund, created by the widow of a well-known Chicago-area public servant and academic, will support students in the two programs from which he earned his Maxwell degrees.

The H. Woods Bowman Graduate Scholarship was recently established with an initial gift from Michele M. Thompson and will be completed by Thompson with a planned bequest. When the fund is complete (with an expected value of $150,000), it will be used each year to provide scholarship and financial assistance to students pursuing either a master’s degree in public administration or a doctoral degree in economics at Maxwell.

H. Woods Bowman earned a Maxwell MPA in 1965 (receiving the Mosher Prize for distinction in public administration) and a doctorate in economics in 1969. He moved to Chicago, where he worked as a research economist for the Federal Reserve Bank and then taught economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was elected to the state legislature in 1976, serving as a representative from the Evanston, Illinois, area until 1989; during this span he headed the legislature’s Appropriations Committee for seven years. He then served as the chief financial officer for Cook County (1990-94), after which he joined DePaul University’s School of Public Service, from which he retired in 2012 as a full professor. His research focused on nonprofit finance, and he wrote Finance Fundamentals for Nonprofits (published by John Wiley & Sons in 2011). He died in late 2015 in a vehicular accident.

“I am pleased to have long known Woods Bowman, an important figure to me as a young faculty member when I was just beginning to teach public administration many years ago,” said David M. Van Slyke, current dean of the Maxwell School. “This generous support for the next generation of graduate students in public administration and doctoral students in economics at Maxwell is a fitting memorial to Woods and one that we are honored to have received.”

08/28/18