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2013 Most Influential Women Honoree: Stephanie Bryant

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Stephanie Bryant is good with numbers. As past international president of honorary accounting fraternity Beta Alpha Psi, past national president of the American Accounting Association and the current dean of Missouri State University’s College of Business, Bryant has been in the numbers business for the past 24 years.

Bryant says after 15 years in higher education and serving as director of the school of accountancy and interim associate dean of the College of Business at the University of South Florida, she found her ultimate calling at MSU. With more than 4,600 students and 150 faculty and staff, COB is the largest public university business school in the central Midwest and one of the top 50 largest in the nation.

With just two year’s under her belt at MSU, Bryant has instituted and expedited numerous improvements including helping COB gain reaccredidation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Bryant also built the COB Executive Advisory Council into a national group of 30 C-suite businesspeople, partnered with Mercy and CoxHealth to offer the executive master of health administration and developed and rolled out a night and weekend bachelor’s program for Ozarks Technical Community College students. But her biggest challenge with the college is yet to come as she embarks on a $25 million renovation and addition to Glass Hall that will update facilities and provide a state-of-the-art Bloomberg trading floor.

Bryant counts her time as director of the southeast region of Beta Alpha Psi as her proudest professional accomplishment.

“When I was asked to run for director, I was an untenured assistant professor who very much wanted to be successful in gaining tenure,” she said, noting tenure depends almost wholly on a professor’s ability to publish research articles. “Virtually all tenured professors strongly urged me to extract myself from service to BAP. … My husband Gary asked me wether at the end of my life I would want to be remembered for how many articles I published, or for the positive impact I had on the world? I knew then I would continue my service to BAP. I have never once regretted that decision.”

Outside the office, Bryant is a dedicated civil servant, choosing, as she says, “community and civic service opportunities carefully to provide the most meaningful service” she can contribute. Bryant serves on the Care to Learn Advisory Council and attended the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce Community Leadership visit to Nashville, Tenn., in September.[[In-content Ad]]

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