In 1989/90 he was a Fulbright Scholar to Ireland with a lecture/research appointment at Dublin City University. He won the university-wide Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 1988. He served as the director of the University Honors Program from 1991-1994. In 1999 he received a Studs Terkel Humanitarian Award from the Illinois Humanities Council. In April 2005, Chown received the Northern Illinois University Presidential Teaching Award. 

Professor Chown has directed four feature length documentaries with history as a theme.  His Barbed Wire Pioneers: Inventing a Community won second place in the Biography division of the Silver State Documentary Festival in 1998.  John Peter Altgeld: The Eagle Remembered won first place at Silver State in Fall 2000. It was also screened at Northwestern's Flickers Film festival and was named a semi-finalist for the Angelus Award in Los Angeles. DeKalb Stories premiered before an audience of 900 at DeKalb's Egyptian theatre in June of 2001.  In 2005 Chown completed work on a documentary on Abraham Lincoln and Sauk Chief Black Hawk titled Lincoln and Black Hawk funded by the Illinois Humanities Council in conjunction with the Abraham Lincoln Digitization Project at NIU. It was shown on WTTW in Chicago on Novemter 12, 2006.