When president F. DuBois Bowman ‘92 returned to Chapel Hill to address Carolina’s 2026 doctoral graduates, he brought the perspective of a college president, nationally recognized biostatistician and public health leader. He also returned as a Tar Heel, shaped by the place where his own doctoral journey started.
Bowman, who earned his Ph.D. in biostatistics from Carolina in 2000, delivered the keynote address at the 2026 Doctoral Hooding ceremony. Now the 13th president of Morehouse College, he has built a career spanning statistical research, neuroscience, public health leadership and institutional transformation. In his remarks, he made clear that much of that path was shaped during his years as a graduate student at Carolina.
“Returning to UNC's campus always brings back really fond memories of a wonderful time in my life and a terrific graduate school experience,” Bowman told the graduates. “Carolina provided exceptional training. It shaped me in ways that I am still discovering, more than two decades later.”
For Bowman, Carolina was not the obvious choice at first. After earning his master’s degree at the University of Michigan, he applied to doctoral programs there and at UNC. Staying in Michigan would have been easier. He already knew the campus and the faculty.
Then he visited Chapel Hill.
Bowman met faculty in the Department of Biostatistics who were, he said, “giants in the field.” Their strength in areas that interested him, including linear models, categorical data analysis and survival analysis, made the department feel like the right place to grow. He quickly realized Carolina was where he wanted to continue his training.
That decision became foundational. At Carolina, Bowman developed deep theoretical training in biostatistics, specializing in linear models and methods for working with missing or imperfect data. He learned to make rigorous judgments with imperfect information, a lesson that would stay with him through a career spanning complex biomedical data, public health questions and institutional leadership.
“I felt fortunate to be at a place where I could build a solid foundation and then learn my specialty from the best in the world,” he said.
He also gained experience beyond the classroom. As a doctoral student, Bowman worked part time with a contract research organization led by a faculty member in biostatistics. The work allowed him to apply statistical theory to pharmaceutical and medical device studies. It also taught him habits of documentation, project management and mentorship that later shaped the way he ran research teams and guided doctoral students.
The experience, he said, gave him “the best of both worlds,” combining theory and methods in the department with real-world application.
After Carolina, Bowman joined the faculty at Emory University, where his statistical training helped him enter the emerging field of neuroimaging. He developed models for complex brain imaging data and contributed to research on Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, schizophrenia and addiction. He later held senior leadership roles at Columbia University and served as dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health before returning to Morehouse, his undergraduate alma mater, as president.
At Morehouse, Bowman is preparing students for a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence and rapid technological change. He believes every graduate should have broad AI literacy, while also learning how to use new tools responsibly. That work has sharpened his view of what higher education must provide in this moment: technical fluency, ethical judgment and the ability to keep learning.
“Higher education has a real responsibility to cultivate critical thinkers who can be responsible users of technology in the present and help shape the future,” Bowman said. “There’s a sense of urgency that our future is led by people who have that training and will be on the front lines of change.”
That vision guided his message to Carolina’s doctoral graduates. Bowman told them they are entering “a remarkable and uncertain moment in human history,” one in which entire professions are being redefined and the future of AI is still taking shape.
“The uncertainty in the world today is why your education, your training, matters now more than ever,” he said.
He urged graduates to maintain scientific rigor, create new breakthroughs, and make sure technological change is guided by ethics. Their doctoral training, he told them, had prepared them for that responsibility.
“A graduate degree is proof that you have learned how to acquire expertise and how to expand knowledge,” Bowman said. “You know how to analyze, investigate, adapt, revise, infer and persist.”
Bowman’s own path shows how those capacities can unfold over time. He arrived at Carolina with interests in mathematics, statistics and health. He left with training that helped him build a research career, lead major public health institutions and now guide one of the nation’s most storied colleges.
Standing again at Carolina more than two decades later, he told the University’s newest doctoral graduates that their training has prepared them with the discipline of learning, adapting and leading when the path ahead is unclear.
“The future will often present as imperfect data, noisy, incomplete, evolving,” he said. “Your responsibility will be to exercise judgment amid the uncertainty.”
Read more at gradschool.unc.edu