Miguelina Feris ’21 has had many great experiences at Bryant University, she says, almost too many to count. Most of them revolve around the people she’s met and befriended here. “Every person I’ve met and every group I’ve gotten involved with has been so special to me, because all of them have played a really important role in my college career,” says Feris.

An international student from the Dominican Republic, Feris chose to attend Bryant because she wanted to forge her own path. The warm welcome she experienced at Bryant when she was touring schools convinced her that the University was the perfect fit. “I knew that this was the school for me,” says Feris. “Bryant is 100% the caring community people talk about.”

The person I want to be
Feris, who hopes to one day work for the United Nations, chose to focus her academic path on Global Studies, which prepares students to be effective leaders and world citizens. Her studies have provided her with an understanding of other countries, cultures, and global interactions necessary to succeed in the modern interconnected world. “My major has given with an awareness of a wide range of issues – every topic and every issue that might come my way,” she notes. “It’s preparing me to work with, and lead, people from all over the world.”

“This is a path that’s preparing me to be the person that I want."

Her professors, including Professor of English and Cultural Studies Alex Perullo, helped her figure out her plan for her future and select classes that would provide her with the skills and insights she’d need to achieve her ambitions – including courses in Management, Politics and Law, and Economics. “Being able to carefully choose every class at Bryant has really made it special,” Feris says. “It makes your learning experience unique and, for every class that I’ve taken, I can see how it's going to fit in my life when I leave school.”

“This is a path that’s preparing me to be the person that I want,” she states

Making connections
In her time at Bryant, making connections and bringing people together has been important to Feris. “It's important to make people feel like they have a family on campus and that they have someone they can reach out to,” she notes. The President of Bryant’s International Student Organization, she is also a member of the Student Advisory Board for Inclusive Excellence and the Bryant Senior Advisory Council.

The leadership opportunities she’s taken on have taught her how to make a difference. “It’s about understanding the environment and people and helping everyone reach their potential,” she says. “It’s really powerful to be able to identify someone's strengths and put that together with someone else’s strengths to create something.”

"When you have people that believe in you, like I have had at Bryant, you can do anything.”

Feris recently organized and moderated Bryant’s annual “I am an Immigrant” panel, an event that brought together Bryant students representing nearly a dozen countries of origin to share their stories and perspectives – and their advice on building a stronger, more global community. The panel had a special resonance for her, she says, because finding her own voice was perhaps the most important thing she’s learned at Bryant.

“By speaking up and making my own choices, I learned that I was getting to know myself better,” says Feris. “I was growing. I was learning what my strengths were and realizing how capable am. If you don’t do things on your own, you’ll never learn those things.”

She’s eager to help make sure that other students have the same fantastic experience she’s had. “When you have people that believe in you, like I have had at Bryant, you can do anything,” Feris notes