Constance Bowe, M.D.

Dr. Bowe, formally trained as a pediatric neurologist, has been active in medical education design and delivery throughout her career at both private and public medical schools.  She has served as faculty in the Harvard Macy Institute’s (HMI) faculty development programs for ‘Educators in the Health Professions’ and ‘Leading Innovations in Healthcare and Education’ since 1998 and she co-directs HMI’s program ‘A Systems Approach to Assessment in Health Professions Education’.  She is also a senior consultant to Partners Harvard Medical International on its global healthcare projects focused on the evaluation and development of health science education.

Dr. Bowe’s consulting work, faculty development efforts and publications have been informed by the variety of educational experiences and roles that she has played at Stanford and Brown Universities and the University of California, Davis.  In addition to teaching Neuroscience and Clinical Neurology at these institutions, she has directed Neurology clerkships, chaired strategic educational planning processes, chaired and participated in medical curricula reforms and faculty curriculum committees.  At UC Davis, she developed and directed a longitudinal, interdisciplinary medical school course, designed several faculty development programs and directed a student learning community and advising program.  All of these experiences have contributed to a deepening appreciation of the influence of organizational assumptions and culture on academic institutions’ decision making processes on how to best prepare graduates for their future roles in health care.

Her international consulting work in designing new health science curricula and assessment programs has further heightened her awareness of the common dilemmas health science educators encounter despite institutional and cultural differences.  Health science education programs represent complex adaptive systems and Dr. Bowe is currently exploring the utility of applying systems theory principles in assessment design to streamline the evaluation process and provide more informative and actionable direction for program improvement.

Dr. Bowe received a B.S. in Psychology from Fordham University in New York, her M.D. degree from Stanford University in California and completed residencies in Pediatrics and Adult Neurology (with special competency in Child Neurology) at Stanford University Hospital.  She has served on the faculty at Brown University where she was Director of Pediatric Neurology and the University of California, Davis where she is Professor (Emeritus) of Clinical Neurology.