Bowman's scholarship uses a social psychological lens to explore key topics in higher education, including student success, diversity, rankings, admissions, and quantitative methodology.

Since 2009, Bowman’s work has appeared in more than 80 journal articles, 20 book chapters, and 100 peer-reviewed conference presentations. This research has been published in leading education journals, such as Review of Educational Research, Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Sociology of Education. Bowman received the Promising Scholar/Early Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education in 2012, and he was the University of Iowa Scholar of the Year in 2018.