university in Smithfield, Rhode Island, United States. It has three colleges, the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Health and Behavioral Sciences, and the College of Business, and is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.
== History ==
=== Butler Exchange and downtown Providence ===
Bryant University was founded in 1863 as a branch of a national school which originally taught bookkeeping and methods of business communication and was named after founders, John Collins Bryant and Henry Beadman Bryant. This separate chain of schools is currently called Bryant & Stratton College. In 1878 the Providence branch of Bryant & Stratton was sold to a teacher at the school, Thomas Stowell. Stowell died in 1916 the school was sold again and merged with Henry Jacobs' Rhode Island Commercial School (founded 1898). Classes for Bryant and Stratton College were originally held in the now demolished Butler Exchange building located in downtown Providence, at 111 Westminster Street on Kennedy Plaza. …
