Dr. Bethany Bowling always knew she would have a job in the sciences.

“I got interested in science in middle school. I loved dissecting things,” she says. “I got really interested in biology pretty early on. And I was good at math. When I went to college, it was crystal clear that a biology major was not anything that was negotiable.”

After receiving her biology degree from Thomas More University, where she also played basketball, she went to graduate school to pursue a graduate degree in biology at the University of Cincinnati. After earning her master’s she began a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies also at UC, she started working with people not just in the biology department, but across campus in the medical school, the College of Education and even the College of Engineering.

Her time in the doctorate program helped prepare her, she says, for her current role: dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northern Kentucky University.

“I was always engaged in teaching, research, and outreach with people from different disciplines, which I think really helped me in this role because that's what this role is all the time,” she says. “It's trying to figure out where we're meeting each other in the middle and trying to understand different disciplines.”

When Dr. Bowling began her job search in 2007 after completing her doctorate, she didn’t think it would be possible to stay in the Greater Cincinnati area. She expanded her search and applied for jobs in cities across the country, including Denver and Chicago, just in case.

However, a professor job opened up at NKU, and Dr. Bowling was speechless.

“When the job came open here in the biology department, it was like it was too good to be true,” she says. I knew from being in the community that the biology department had an excellent reputation.“I told my family, ‘Please don’t get your hopes up. They're doing a national search. It's going to be a process, and we'll see what happens.’ And I was so thrilled to get the job at NKU and contribute to the northern Kentucky community. It was truly my dream job.”

Dr. Bowling joined the biology faculty and was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and to professor in 2019.

When the opportunity arose to join the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) leadership, Dr. Bowling went for the associate dean role, serving from 2017 to 2022.

“I took that job because I was interested in working across disciplines,” she says. “It's been really gratifying to do this work and to learn about what other people are doing and working to support them.”

Dr. Bowling was later named senior associate dean and served in that role from 2022 to 2023.

Nearly 17 years after arriving at NKU, things came full circle when Dr. Bowling was named interim dean.

One of the inherent challenges she faces is the magnitude of more than 50 major programs in COAS—NKU’s largest college.

But she doesn’t let that stop her from celebrating the variety of disciplines and student success.

“I love showing off our college and making those connections to help our faculty, our staff and our students be successful. That's really what I get to do every day,” she says. “We produce so many graduates who are contributing to the region. I want people to know us. I want them to know that Western & Southern and Fidelity love our majors from the English department and other programs like anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. I want them to know that our students from biology, chemistry, and math go on to work at Gravity Diagnostics and Medpace. Some of our students go on to the UK College of Medicine right here on our campus. We've had great success in our graduates being accepted  to UK-COM NKY campus and supporting our medical infrastructure in northern Kentucky.”

In her role as dean, Dr. Bowling oversees more than 50 staff and more than 200 faculty.

She recognizes her role as a leader for such a large group, but she believes things work better when there’s a team.

“There's nothing I love more than a functioning team,” she says, “A high-functioning team is when I'm in my best place. And that's really what I try to cultivate in the college.”

Even though she has stepped away from the classroom, Dr. Bowling still has a passion for supporting students and helping them be successful. She has been involved in many initiatives to increase accessibility for students including National Science Foundation-funded work to increase scholarships for academically talented, lower income students and increasing math readiness for STEM majors.

And she believes that student success extends to the physical spaces on campus as well.

There are many spaces facing renovations for the benefit of students. Corbett Theatre in the Fine Arts Center recently reopened. NKU broke ground on the Dorothy Westerman Herrmann Science Center expansion last fall. And Landrum Hall will undergo construction beginning next year.

“One of the things that I love the most is just supporting our students to be successful. I think making the classrooms more collaborative and spaces more inviting will be a huge win for a lot of folks on campus,” she says. “It makes me super excited that we have the opportunity to make the spaces so much more functional for teaching and learning—to make the everyday experience a bit better for our students, faculty, and staff.”