Barbara Taylor Bowman, a nationally recognized leader in early childhood education, devoted her life to improving how youngsters are taught through Chicago’s Erikson Institute, which offers training to teachers.

“One of the most important lessons she taught me was that with hard work and a passionate determination, you can change what is into what ought to be,” said her daughter, Valerie Jarrett, Obama Foundation CEO and former White House senior adviser. “I think her experience in the classroom and the research that she did informed her about how important investing in young children can be — it sets their lives on an upward trajectory, and it needs to be followed by primary and secondary education as well.”

Bowman, 96, died of heart failure Nov. 4 at University of Chicago Medicine, her daughter said. She was a longtime resident of the South Kenwood neighborhood.

Born Barbara Taylor on Chicago’s South Side, her father was Robert Rochon Taylor, who chaired the Chicago Housing Authority in the 1940s and later was the namesake of a now-demolished South Side CHA complex. Her grandfather, Robert Robinson Taylor, in 1892 was the first Black person to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the first Black accredited architect in the U.S.

Bowman grew up in the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments. She attended Hyde Park High School then transferred to Northfield Mount Hermon, a preparatory school, in Northfield, Massachusetts. Bowman received a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and taught at the University of Chicago Laboratory School while earning a master’s degree in education from the University of Chicago in 1952. “I discovered I loved it and never looked back,” Bowman told the Tribune in 2013. “I discovered how interesting young children were. I found them intellectually fascinating, not just warm and cuddly. Why were they doing what they were doing and how do you explain what they are doing?”

In 1950, Bowman married Dr. James Bowman. The couple lived in Denver for several years, but Dr. Bowman struggled to find a job at a major academic teaching hospital, leading them to look at opportunities outside the U.S.

Her husband was offered the job of helping to start the first major hospital in Shiraz, Iran, and chair its department of pathology, Jarrett said. The couple moved to Iran in 1955 and then moved to London before returning in 1962 to Chicago, where her husband became a professor at the U. of C.

Bowman taught nursery school at the Chicago Child Care Society in Hyde Park for several years. In 1966, Bowman teamed up with two colleagues from her days working at the U. of C.’s Lab School, psychologist Maria Piers and social worker Lorraine Wallach, to form what became known as the Erikson Institute.

Funded by philanthropist Irving B. Harris, the Erikson Institute was conceived as a graduate school for child development that aimed to train those working in the federal government’s recently created Head Start program, an education and social services program for low-income preschoolers.

“She wasn’t just a leader — she was a visionary, a builder, a nurturer,” said Erikson Institute President Mariana Souto-Manning. “She had a steadfast commitment to the field of early childhood education and an ability to push everyone forward, to focus on action, even when things didn’t look great.” Linda Gilkerson, a professor at Erikson, recalled a paper Bowman wrote on self-knowledge as a professional competency.

“That was a very big idea — a very new idea, that there’s formal knowledge that you know in a field, and then there’s knowledge of yourself and your culture, and you have to look at that as well,” Gilkerson said. “Now we talk about reflective practice and we act like it was always around but it wasn’t — Barbara was one of the people who put that on the map.”

Another colleague, Jie-Qi Chen, said what struck her about Bowman was her modesty.

“The week of her 96th birthday … she wrote a message to the Erikson community and she said, ‘I want people to know, this wasn’t a solo effort. It was a selfless group of people united by a common goal, and I was like, ‘Wow, she thought about it like a community impact, rather than her own legacy or her own contribution,’” Chen said.

For years, Bowman held graduation ceremonies for Erikson’s graduates in the backyard of her home in Kenwood. “She opened up both her home and her heart to people about whom she cared deeply, and because Erikson was her second child, if you will, she wanted the graduates and their family members to feel like they were part of a broader family, the Erikson family,” Jarrett said. “And what better place to do that but her backyard.” Bowman later headed graduate studies at Erikson and was acting dean for a time. She also was president of Erikson from 1982 until 1983 and again from 1994 until 2001, and she was acting co-president from 2013 until 2014.

“We now know that quality early childhood care and education are the bedrock for future success in school and in life,” she wrote in the Tribune in 1996. “While everyone agrees with the goal of breaking the cycle of welfare dependency, the trick is doing it without harming our children and creating bigger, more costly long-term problems in the process.”

Bowman retired from Erikson just one week before her death, and she never stepped down from its board, Jarrett said. “I can’t tell everyone else to work hard if I don’t work hard too,” Bowman told the Tribune in 2013. “And it is not like I don’t like doing most of the things I do. It is not punishment. I am enjoying doing it.”

Bowman took leave from Erikson for about eight years in the early 2000s to work for then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan. When Duncan was appointed U.S. Secretary of Education, he once again sought Bowman’s counsel, which she provided for about six months on a part-time basis at the outset of the administration of President Barack Obama.

“She led all of my early childhood education efforts at both CPS and DOE, and did so with impeccable integrity, effectiveness and urgency,” Duncan said. “She dramatically expanded access to high-quality prekindergarten education for so many disadvantaged, and deserving, young children. She knew this was the surest path to academic success, and ultimately out of poverty.”

Bowman was president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a professional organization that accredits early childhood programs, and she published dozens of journal articles, gave hundreds of speeches and lectures and served for several terms on the board of Roosevelt University.

“She taught me by her example how to be successful both professionally but more important as a human being,” Jarrett said. “She was famous for saying it’s not what happens to you in life but what you do about it.” Bowman’s husband died in 2011. In addition to her daughter, Bowman is survived by a granddaughter; and two great-grandchildren. Erikson Institute is planning to host a memorial service this coming spring, Jarrett said.

Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.