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Terry Bower: The Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Water Studies Certification Program
The Colorado River.
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n 2018, the Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver) developed an online Water Studies certificate program for water professionals and those interested in learning more about water. The program comprises three courses, each in a convenient self-paced online format: Water Law, U.S. Water Concerns, and Colorado Water and the American West. Participants can take all three courses and earn a certificate or take just one or two courses if they prefer. In this interview, Terry Bower, MSU Denver’s associate vice president of innovative and lifelong learning, tells us about the certificate program’s genesis. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell our readers about your background.
8 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | September 2021
Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about MSU Denver. Terry Bower: MSU Denver is a public university with approximately 20,000 students. We offer bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and certificates. MSU Denver is a Hispanicserving institution. Nearly half our students are students of color, and over half are first-generation college students. Close to 80 percent of our students are working while they’re pursuing their education. We have 95 majors and 8 graduate programs. We have a large economic effect on Denver and the state of Colorado, because the vast majority of our graduates stay in Colorado after they graduate and contribute to the local economy. We share a downtown campus with two other higher education institutions, the Community College of Denver and the University of Colorado Denver, and the campus is vibrant. What I love the most about our campus is that it reminds me of being in New York; it is bustling with people of all ages, colors, and backgrounds. It’s a really an exciting place to be. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell our readers about your water certificate program, how it started, and what it does. Terry Bower: It started with my passion for water. Growing up in DC, I was heavily involved with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, first as a high schooler, when I participated in municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MSU DENVER.
Terry Bower: I grew up in Washington, DC. I went to Emory University for my undergraduate degree in English and to Arizona State University (ASU) for my graduate degree in social work. Along the way, I continued to move back and forth from the East Coast to the West, exploring the best that each has to offer. The majority of my professional career has been in communications or higher education. I developed my passion for communications from my father, who ran a DC-based ad agency for over 40 years. I developed my passion for higher education while working at the George Washington University (GWU), where I created corporate training programs, including GWU’s first Arabic interpretation program, which I created right after 9/11. My husband and I moved to Denver in 2011, and after a stint with the mayor’s office, I started at MSU
Denver in 2017, building continuing education and alternative credential programs for the community.
