Bryant University’s Global Supply Chain Management Program Worth Noting

Editor’s Note: As our readers know, Michael Gravier, Associate Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at Bryant University, is a regular SCMR contributor, and frequently interviewed for magazine features. Here, he shares his views on the school’s curriculum and vision.

SCMR: How many students are currently enrolled in the program?

Gravier: This is our sixth year for the undergraduate program and the fifth for the MBA program. In total, we have 164 undergraduates and 16 MBA's in the program, with 67 undergraduates scheduled to graduate in the class of 2018.

SCMR: How many alumni are there of the program?

Gravier: So far we have 230 alumni. We stay in touch with many of them. Bryant has a long tradition of a strong alumni network, and this tradition continues in the supply chain program. We have a lot of companies that love our graduates and come back every year for new hires, which helps to strengthen our alumni network. Our alumni have a strong mentoring influence on our students, which we're looking at turning into a formal program.

SCMR: What makes Bryant's global supply chain program unique from others?

Gravier: Our student club! They call themselves the “Supply Chain Leadership Association,” and it is a group of highly motivated students that takes the lead in creating relationship with local industry leaders via a bi-annual networking night designed to create mentoring relationships, tours of local industry facilities, presentations of student research into cutting edge practices like blockchain, and a special panel of experts on supply chain internship opportunities. Think about that: the students take the lead with industry relationships. Does it get any better than that?

SCMR: How is Bryant innovating its curriculum when it comes to global supply chain management?

Gravier: One fundamental innovation is the inter-disciplinary nature of our faculty. We considered housing the program in a single department, it makes the administration easier. But real-life supply chain managers don't live in that world. Our faculty must keep their expertise (and connections) in logistics, operations, marketing, finance, and information systems—and we demand that our students consult with different faculty to get different perspectives when they complete major projects. This teaches them that there's no “right” answer, and instead they must consider trade-offs rooted in analytics and justified in performance outcomes.

• The strength of our inter-disciplinary approach can be seen in the results of our undergraduate capstone projects. Our students are required to pass a course where they must demonstrate that they can apply their education in real-life companies. In the past two years, our students have produced $74.5 million in improved processes and other project recommendations. This is an average of $4.7 million per company per year in savings!
• We built the program based upon the results of interviews and surveys of industry leaders, and we continuously update the content of our courses based on industry needs. With six classes that we've graduated so far, 100% of our students have found jobs or gotten into grad school within 6 months of graduating, with 90% finding jobs before they graduate.
• We have an alliance with SAP and our students are all proficient with it.

SCMR: Anything else you would like to add?

Gravier: We pride ourselves on having a small program with strong faculty mentoring and “high touch.” In this regard, not many programs equal us. The faculty mentoring plus the strong alumni network combine to create a much deeper learning experience steeped in real-world application.

Learn more about the Bryant University Global Supply Chain Management

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