Rate My Professor Forrest Bowlick

Forrest J. Bowlick is a Senior Lecturer in Geoscience at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with faculty appointments in the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences and the Department of Environmental Conservation. Specializing in GIS and geography education, he earned his PhD in Geography from Texas A&M University in 2016, MS in Geography from the University of Idaho in 2012, and BA in Geography with GIS focus from the University of Northern Colorado in 2010. Bowlick holds several key administrative positions, including Graduate Program Director for the MS in Geography - GIST Concentration, Associate Department Head for Finance and Operations in Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, Geography Program co-head, Co-Director of the Regional GIS Hub at UMass Amherst, and Fellows Coordinator for the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, where he also serves as a Staff Fellow. These roles underscore his contributions to GIS education infrastructure and program development at the institution.

Bowlick's research investigates how students learn GIS, particularly in the field of CyberGIS, through analysis of curriculum and instruction to build evidence-based understandings of GIS programs' knowledge, skills, and practices. Additional interests encompass geography education, geography in higher education, resources of the elements, and tropical glaciers. His key publications include "Computer Science and Programming Courses in Geography Departments in the United States" (The Professional Geographer, 2017), "Student Learning in an Introductory GIS Course: Using a Project-Based Approach" (Transactions in GIS, 2016), "Cyber Literacy for GIScience: Toward Formalizing Geospatial Computing Education" (The Professional Geographer, 2019), "Valuable Components of CyberGIS: Expert Viewpoints through Q-Method Interviews" (Transactions in GIS, 2018), "A Dark-Side to Data-Centric Geography? Implications for Geography’s Frontier" (The Professional Geographer, 2018), and "Effects of an Introductory Geography Course on Student Perceptions of Geography at the University of Idaho" (Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2013). For his teaching excellence, Bowlick was named a 2022-23 Lilly Fellow by the Center for Teaching and Learning. He led the team launching MassView in 2025, a service enhancing Massachusetts' geospatial resources with remote-sensing data and applications for education, municipalities, and industry. Bowlick has shared insights on GIS pedagogy via the Spatial Signals podcast.