Fowler was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow from 1980-1982 at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Vann Bennett.[1][2] She remained at Johns Hopkins for two more years as a research associate before becoming an assistant professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School in 1984.[1] From 1987 to 2018, Fowler led a research group at Scripps Research, serving as an Associate Dean for Graduate Studies starting in 2013 and the acting Chair of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology from 2014-2015.[1] In 2018, she became the Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware.[1]