Before being appointed to the CSU faulty, Dr. Bowen was an associate professor at the National Sun Yat-Sen University Institute of Human Resource Management from 1993-1996. She is an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist.

Dr. Bowen is interested in selection, performance appraisal, and gender and cultural issues in the workplace. Specifically, she is an expert in discrimination in the workplace, cross-cultural issues encountered by multi-national corporations, performance management, employee/customer satisfaction surveys, selection and job analysis, and research methods and statistical analysis. Dr. Bowen is also interested in the application of psychometric techniques to validate tests or questionnaires as well as the application of meta-analysis in human resource management. In 1999-2001, Dr. Bowen received a grant from CSU for her study of social desirability in research methodology. Dr. Bowen is currently working on projects concerning the flextime arrangement on the job performance and job autonomy of radiologists.