Owens' early education was in segregated public schools.[1] Owens then attended North Carolina College, now North Carolina Central University, graduating in 1961 summa cum laude in Biology (B.S.) and Mathematics (minor).[3][6] After graduating, she was employed as a laboratory assistant at a National Science Foundation Summer Institute for High School Teachers at North Carolina College, and she spent a summer in the lab of Daniel C. Tosteson in the Department of Physiology at Duke University.[7][8] Then, in 1962, she began her Ph.D. studies of biochemistry and physiology in the laboratory Jacob J. Blum at Duke shortly after the university racially integrated its graduate and professional schools.[3][7] When she graduated in 1967, she became one of two first African Americans, the first woman, to receive a Ph.D. from Duke University and the first woman to receive any degree in physiology from Duke.[3][8]