About Bryant University

 

Bryant University is an institution of higher education located in Smithfield, Rhode Island. It is a quite selective private university and its motto is “The Character of Success”. About 3800 students attend the university, which was founded in 1863 and offers a variety of interesting and useful courses and a wide range of subjects.

History

In the year of its foundation, the university was a part of Bryant and Stratton College. Only in 1916, the college was sold, and integrated into Rhode Island Commercial School. Bryant University became non-profit in 1949, and its first Master program was available in 1969. Up until the early 1990’s, Bryant University stayed a very successful institution of higher education. In the early nineties, though, interest for the university decreased and the number of applications was going down. When Machtley was hired as the seventh president of the university in 1996, he made huge changes to the campus and invested a large amount of money into renovation. Today, the buildings are modern and the campus looks very inviting, and Bryant University can now proudly boast that it has had two former US Presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, give speeches on campus.

Schools and programs

Bryant University is divided into two colleges, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the College of Business. It also has a College of Graduate Studies that offers three Master programs. At the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the courses offered are designed to encourage critical thinking and widen theoretical knowledge while at the same time providing the student with any practical experience they might need. The subjects available range from Mathematics to English and include all the traditional subjects such as Legal Studies, Political Sciences or History, but also newer study branches such as Environmental Management. The College of Business is particularly renowned for its quality of teaching and the high employability of graduates, and it offers a wide subject range that includes Finance, Marketing and Management, to name a few. The Graduate School is highly selective and offers Master degrees in Business Administration, Professional Accountancy and Science in Taxation. The classes are usually quite small, there is one member of staff for sixteen students on average, and it is rare that more than 30 students are taught by one member of staff. The university is repeatedly listed as one of the best in America by various rankings and reviews.

Student life

The Bryan University Campus is now a very modern area with extensive facilities such as technology centers and a huge library.  Many services are available on campus: food and drink are offered in different shops, there is a University bookstore where study material can be purchased from, and there are study and recreational lounges as well as common rooms, music practice rooms, meeting rooms and an interfaith chapel. There is a very strong sense of community between students, as a large number of them live on campus and this, of course, encourages interaction and a friendly and homely feeling. Amongst the many clubs and societies that will cover anything from academic needs to special interests, it is almost impossible not to find a suitable society for one to join. The University has its own newspaper (called the Archway), and its athletic teams are also very active. At varsity level, there are eleven sports for women and eleven for men, but sports at club level can also be practiced, with ten sports for women and ten for men. Athletic squads of the university carry the name “The Bulldogs”. The student body is very diverse with over 90 % of students coming from other states, and with a quite considerable presence of Black, Hispanic, Asian and International students who all contribute to the cultural diversity on campus and make cross-cultural exchange possible. Students are generally quite young, in fact, 86% of students are younger than 21, which makes for a very dynamic and exciting environment where high school graduates can easily find like-minded people of their own age.

Bryant University is an institution of higher education that manages perfectly to find a balance between academic excellence and an exciting life on campus outside of the study hours. It provides students with a valuable degree and is definitely a place anyone wishing to pursue higher education should consider.