SMITHFIELD – Bryant University President Ronald K. Machtley, who has led the university for 23 years, announced Monday that he will retire as president after commencement in May 2020.
“It has been an honor to serve as president of Bryant University and Kati [his wife] and I are extremely grateful,” the former Rhode Island congressman said a letter to the Bryant community. “We love this institution, its faculty, staff and students. It is simply time to start a new chapter in life. Kati and I would like to pursue creative interests and travel while we’re still in good health, rekindle old friendships, and spend much more time with our children and grandchildren.”
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In an interview with PBN Monday afternoon, Machtley, 70, acknowledged that his wife also will be stepping down as director of the popular Women’s Summit at Bryant after the 2020 event in March. Kati Machtley has been director of the event since its inaugural year in 1997.
“She’s been a driving force” behind the summit, Machtley said. “We hope to find someone to be a surrogate” who can shadow Kati Machtley for a year, then take the reins for 2021.
Machtley’s retirement will bring an end to one of the longest-running collegiate presidencies in the country during which Bryant has experienced unprecedented growth, the university said Monday.
“Ron Machtley has been a catalyst in transforming Bryant from a regional business college to a nationally-ranked, world-class university,” said William Conaty, Bryant board of trustees chairman. “For 23 years he has ignited and sustained growth at Bryant – in academic offerings, enrollment, student programs and athletics, and campus facilities. He has excelled in every aspect of the job.”
Machtley’s contract was due to run through June 30, 2022. The agreement had been extended by the Bryant in March 2018.
He insisted in the interview with PBN that there was “not a single reason” for him to leave, other than the “runway is getting shorter” for him to try some other pursuit in life.
He has lived in Portsmouth for 30 years, and he said he plans to stay in Rhode Island. And while he didn’t have any concrete plans for the future, he said he would spend the next year analyzing what would give him that “creative spark” that leading Bryant had given him.
Of his successes at Bryant, he said he’s most proud of the “academic excellence we’ve developed here,” noting that the university recently recruited a top-notch faculty member for its data-science curriculum. He also said the incoming freshmen class next fall is Bryant’s “brightest the class in terms of GPA, SAT scores and class rank.”
While Machtley said he would make way for a new president in 2020, he was willing to maintain some involvement with the university’s connections to China, where Bryant operates a four-year business degree program in partnership with Beijing Institute of Technology in Guangdong Province.
Relationships are crucial in China, and Machtley has gotten to know the Chinese leaders and government officials over the years. “It’s not easy to do business in China” without those relationships, he said.
Machtley will travel to China in June to attend the program’s first commencement, when 135 students will receive degrees.
When Machtley took the reins of what was then Bryant College in 1996, he recalled Monday, the school had five empty dormitories and a $1.7 million annual budget deficit. Machtley, who was a Republican congressman in Rhode Island from 1989 to 1995 and lost a bid for governor in 1994, had never held an academic administrative job before.
“Kati and I saw this as an opportunity,” he recounted, pointing out that 1996 was the last year that the school, which has since become a university, ran a deficit.
In a news release Monday, Bryant listed numerous university milestones during Machtley’s tenure, including:
- An endowment that has increased to approximately $180 million from $96 million
- A record-breaking capital campaign currently exceeding its goal of $100 million, including a $1 million commitment from Ron and Kati Machtley, with several months still to go
- Establishing the College of Business and College of Arts and Sciences, elevating Bryant from a college to a university
- A move to NCAA Division I athletics
- Doubling undergraduate applications, from approximately 3,900 in 2003 to more than 7,700 from across the country and around the world in 2019 – higher than at any point in Bryant’s history
- A U.S. News & World Report regional ranking jump from No. 24 to No. 10, with nationally ranked programs in international business and marketing
- Establishing the School of Health Sciences and its first clinical program, the fully accredited MSPAS Physician Assistant program
- Making global perspective an integral part of a Bryant education, creating the Sophomore International Experience and a campus in Zhuhai, China
- Hiring 102 additional full-time faculty and staff to serve a full-time student population that grew from approximately 2,200 in 1996 to over 4,500 undergraduates in 2019
- Increasing the percentage of students employed or in graduate school within six months of graduation to 99% in 2018. At $60,000 annually, the median first-year earnings for members of the Class of 2018 tops that of Bryant’s peers
- Redeveloping Bryant’s campus by adding almost 500,000 square feet of academic, library, residence hall, athletic and other facilities, with 20 new facilities, including the award-winning Quinlan/Brown Academic Innovation Center, and the Bulldog Strength and Conditioning facility.
William Hamilton is PBN staff writer and special projects editor. You can follow him on Twitter @waham or email him at hamilton@pbn.com.
