Author Biography

Gregory W. Fowler, PhD, became the seventh president of University of Maryland Global Campus on January 4, 2021. A nationally recognized scholar and leader in developing innovative learning models and experiences for adult and nontraditional populations, he has served on the leadership teams that built what are now the two largest universities in America—both of which serve nontraditional students in nontraditional ways.

Most recently, Fowler served as president of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) Global Campus and before that as SNHU's chief academic officer and vice president for academic affairs for its College of Online and Continuing Education. In almost nine years with the university, he led efforts to develop competency-based online and hybrid programs that respond to the rapidly changing demands of the workforce and global communities, including disadvantaged students in Los Angeles, refugees in Africa and the Middle East, and learners in Mexico and Columbia.

After completing his undergraduate studies at Morehouse College—which included two years as a Charles A. Dana Scholar at Duke University—Fowler began his career at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in Washington, D.C., serving initially as an outreach specialist helping underserved populations access funds and resources to support their communities and amplify their voices. He later served as a media affairs specialist and received several NEH employee awards for developing workshops for historically black colleges and universities and developing and administering a new summer fellows program for outstanding college students.

In addition to his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Morehouse College, George Mason University, and SUNY–Buffalo, Fowler holds an MBA from Western Governors University and has completed programs in higher education administration and executive leadership and negotiation from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and Business School, respectively.

Fowler has been profiled in the Washington Post and named to The Maryland Daily Record's Power 30 Higher Education list for 2021. He is coauthor of Anticipating and Managing Precipitous College Closures (New America, 2020), and contributed to Five Themes for Centering Student Equity, published in 2020 by the Sorenson Impact Center at the University of Utah. He has contributed numerous articles on innovation and evolution in higher education, including "Scaling an Undefined Landscape with Consumers As our Guide" in The Futures of Universities Thoughtbook (North American edition, 2020) and a series of articles in widely-read higher education publications such as The EvoLLLution. He has been a MAPS (Modeling, Analyzing, Prototyping, and Sharing) scholar with the Sorenson and Gates Foundations and an Aspen Institute scholar for the Postsecondary Success for Parents Initiative.