Danika Bowen

Dr. Danika Bowen serves as an instructor for this course and brings more than 20 years of experience in higher education, healthcare education, and executive leadership. She currently works full-time at Walden University in the Academic Success department and also teaches within the Ed.D. program. In her role at Walden, Dr. Bowen supports doctoral students in strengthening their scholarly writing, research design, and academic leadership competencies. She collaborates with faculty and university leaders to promote student persistence, academic quality, and successful doctoral completion.

Dr. Bowen’s formal field of study and teaching centers on educational leadership, nursing education, and higher education administration. Her primary research interests include student success in online and doctoral education, compassion fatigue in nursing, leadership development, and practice-ready specialty nurse education models. She serves as Principal Investigator for research on Compassion Fatigue in Nursing conducted in collaboration with colleagues in South Florida and at the University of Arizona, as well as Principal Investigator for the Practice-Ready Specialty Focus Nurse Education Model.

Her leadership and administrative expertise includes nursing administration, clinical supervision, nurse education (academic and staff development), risk management, healthcare policy and advocacy, program development, strategic planning, workforce development and staffing coordination, and interdisciplinary team leadership. From 2023–2025, Dr. Bowen has presented nationally at the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) Annual Conference, Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), National League for Nursing (NLN), American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL), and the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA), sharing expertise in nursing leadership, academic innovation, and workforce development.
Throughout her career, Dr. Bowen has held progressive executive leadership roles across multiple educational settings, including middle school, high school, community colleges, and institutions offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs. Prior to joining Walden, she served as Vice President of Operations at Chamberlain University, where she oversaw campus operations, regulatory compliance, and academic support services. She also served for eight years as Provost of Carrington College, leading academic strategy, accreditation, faculty development, and multi-campus program expansion.

As a senior executive, Dr. Bowen has demonstrated proven success in operations management, academic innovation, increasing academic quality, workforce development, and accreditation leadership. She launched more than 15 online programs and four new onsite nursing programs, managing the design, implementation, regulatory approval, and accreditation processes for each. She has served as a Commissioner for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges and as Chair of the Educational Programming Committee, contributing to national accreditation policy and standards. She also applies her Six Sigma certification to lead strategic initiatives that drive measurable institutional improvements across multiple colleges.

Her core competencies include operations leadership, academic quality and accreditation, strategic planning, strategic alliances, academic innovation and design, online education development, talent development, organizational change management, student engagement in online learning environments, and workforce solutions. Dr. Bowen remains committed to advancing research-informed practice, strengthening academic institutions, and preparing future leaders in education and healthcare.