Barlow was the first full-time professor of Mormon studies at a secular university as the inaugural Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University (USU), from 2007 to 2018.
In 1975, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Weber State College.
While in the Boston area, Barlow taught at the LDS Church's local Institute of Religion.
[3] In 2017, Barlow held the first fellowship at the Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University.
[4] The establishment in 2007 of the Arrington Chair at USU was one prominent symbol of a new era for the study of the Mormon faith in secular higher education.