Alfred Dowe, Jr. has earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Arkansas. Dowe, who served on Roanoke City Council, the Roanoke City Planning Commission, the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, and the Virginia Municipal League also served on numerous boards in Roanoke including, Center in the Square, the First Tee of Roanoke Valley, the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Rotary Club of Roanoke Valley. Dr. Dowe recently defended his dissertation on the effectiveness of campus visitation programs as an intervention strategy on minority graduate student recruitment and enrollment.
He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from James Madison University, and his Master of Science in Operations Management with a Human Resource Management Certification from the University of Arkansas. A significant portion of his research analyzed the impact that campus visitation programs at Predominately White Institutions (PWI’s) have on minority recruitment in graduate education.
“A significant amount of PWI’s recruit Black students from HBCUs for graduate school, and many of those students and the faculty that support them are unaware of the various financial opportunities at those schools.” Those opportunities often include paid summer research internships, bridge transition programs, and dedicated graduate funding for underrepresented minorities.
“We had HBCU students earning six figure incomes as graduate students”, said Dowe. “I recruited a Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student from North Carolina A&T University to attend the University of Arkansas and her funding package exceeded $107,000 a year, plus free tuition.” Dr. Dowe’s research specifically evaluated the impact that the Attracting Intelligent Minds (AIM) conference had on minority enrollment at the University of Arkansas.
Dowe was a graduate recruiter at the University of Arkansas, where he helped the university become the top graduate school in the Southeastern Conference for two years in HBCU graduate student growth. He as later promoted to Assistant Director of Development, for the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, where his team helped the university successfully complete a $1.25-billion fundraising campaign. Currently, he is the Senior Director of Development and Corporate Engagement at the United Way of Greater Atlanta, where he works with individual, corporate donors, and foundations in the greater Atlanta area to facilitate their support of the United Way and the 13 counties that it supports.
Dowe is the son of Alfred “Skeet” Sr., and the late Blanche S. Dowe of Roanoke.
