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Major: Rawlings Sports Business Management
Graduation Year: May 2017
GPA: 3.5

Volunteering time as the president of the Rawlings Sport Business Management Council at Maryville University, spending 20 hours a week as a marketing intern and continuing to carry a 3.5 GPA through his senior year should be enough for any student to be considered an All-Star.

But Bryan Williams, who will graduate in May 2017 with a BS in Rawlings Sport Business Management, further enhanced his All-Star status when he joined the U.S. Army in January 2016.

“I wanted to do my part in protecting the freedoms that we Americans enjoy every day,” Williams says. “With my family background in the military and my dad serving for 27 years, it just made all the sense in the world to serve and give back if I had the capability.”

Williams took on the responsibility of the U.S. Army while enrolled as a full-time student and working 20-plus hours a week at an internship. “It’s been challenging and rewarding,” he says. “It is all about finding a good balance of time and resources.”

Williams has held career-relevant internships since his freshman year, and those opportunities to gain experience in the workplace before graduation clearly paid off. He already has several job offers.

Williams interned with the St. Louis Blues in the operations and marketing departments, the University of Northern Iowa athletics department and with Rawlings, a leader in the sports equipment industry and corporate sponsor of the Maryville program.

“If it weren’t for the Rawlings Sports Business Management program, I never could have obtained all the internships I’ve had,” Williams says.

It was Maryville’s strong partnership with Rawlings—along with the extraordinarily high number of available internships—that first attracted Williams to Maryville.

“Coming to Maryville was a very easy decision to make,” he says.