April 07, 2015
Arthur Ryan ’63 backs PC’s business school for its ‘winning game plan’
By Vicki-Ann Downing
Arthur F. Ryan ’63 & ’90Hon., one of the most successful business leaders in the nation, decided to donate $5 million to the Providence College School of Business for one reason — he believes it’s a great investment.
In 1990, at age 47, Ryan became one of the youngest presidents in the history of Chase Manhattan Bank. In 1994, he was the first president and CEO of Prudential Insurance Company of America selected from outside the firm. Under his leadership, Prudential, the nation’s largest insurer, became the publicly traded financial services giant known worldwide as Prudential Financial.
Ryan retired in 2008. But he still knows business. And he believes that PC has a winning game plan in its pairing of business and the liberal arts — and in dynamic leadership under College President Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P. ’80 and Dr. Sylvia Maxfield, dean of the business school.
“I did my homework and that was my conclusion,” Ryan said. “Coming back to campus and walking around and talking to students, doing due diligence, you can feel it. I didn’t have to give a test. It’s there. If you’ve been around organizations long enough, you can feel it in the walls. People want to be part of a momentum change.”
The $5 million leadership gift from Ryan and his wife, Patricia, is part of Our Moment: The Next Century Campaign for Providence College. PC will use the donation to help turn Dore Hall, a former residence hall, into a 21st century business school building named “The Arthur and Patricia Ryan Center for Business Studies.” The building will be expanded, renovated, and surrounded by a glass atrium that will become a meeting and study hub on the East Campus for students and faculty.
The Ryans have long been known for their generosity to PC. They donated $1 million toward construction of the Smith Center for the Arts, where the Ryan Concert Hall carries their name. They endowed the Arthur F. Ryan Family Scholarship Fund. And Ryan served on the PC Board of Trustees from 1995-2011.
But Ryan never studied business — he majored in mathematics. So the idea that PC’s business program incorporated the liberal arts was important to him. At PC, business faculty, including Maxfield, teach in the Development of Western Civilization Program, a four-course requirement for every freshman and sophomore.
“I’ve always been a believer in interdisciplinary teaching,” said Ryan. “Bringing together philosophy, history, religion, brings a perspective you don’t get by only looking at them individually. The ability to take different aspects of what goes on in life from different disciplines and bring them together provides the skill that I call critical thinking.
“Most success comes from the marriage of more than one discipline. Things are created because people go outside the discipline and bring in a different thought process.”
Maxfield was named dean in 2012, just as the business school received its accreditation from AACSB International, The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Ryan said he asked her why she wanted to work at PC.
“She talked about how she was going to make a difference,” Ryan said. “She said, ‘We’re going to integrate business with the liberal arts. We’re not just going to co-exist.’”
For Ryan, it was great news.
“I believe that liberal arts and business together contribute to the best outcome,” he said. “I believe the ability to ‘do the right thing’ comes out of the humanities more than business. Just having an ethics course in your business school isn’t going to do it.”
Maxfield’s background is “extraordinary,” Ryan said. She has degrees from Cornell University and Harvard University. In addition to teaching at Yale University and Simmons College, she worked in the business world as vice president and senior sovereign analyst for Latin America at Lehman Brothers. Ryan said she is committed to recruiting faculty who share her commitment to the liberal arts.
Ryan also credits Father Shanley for recognizing and supporting the importance of combining business and the humanities.
“I have enormous confidence in Father Shanley,” said Ryan. “When you meet him, it’s ‘wow.’ He’s young, and he’s energetic, and he’s smart. Father Shanley and his team have made the College into something really special.”
Ryan, a native of Queens, N.Y., moved to Long Island as a boy when his father, a factory worker, purchased a Levitt-built home in the suburbs. After completing his studies in Catholic elementary schools, Ryan looked forward to attending the local public high school. But he was awarded a scholarship to Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn, and his father, who was deeply religious, prevailed upon him to go.
His parents’ influence also led Ryan to PC. They wanted him to attend a Catholic college and Ryan wanted to live away from home. Providence was a perfect choice, not too far from home. Though it was an all-male, mostly commuter school in 1959, Ryan discovered students from different backgrounds. His freshman roommates in Aquinas Hall were Edward J. Quinn, Jr. ’63, from Maryland, and George R. Zalucki ’63, a former Marine from Connecticut who played basketball.
The Dominicans kept a close watch on students, something Ryan didn’t always appreciate at the time.
“As a student you’re not always looking for the ‘attention’ you get from faculty and administrators, but there’s a benefit to it for children the first time away from home,” Ryan said.
An ROTC cadet at PC, Ryan spent two years in the Army after graduation. Thanks to his mathematics background, he was sent to Army Security Agency School, where he was introduced to computer technology at the early stages of its development.
That helped him get a job as a computer systems designer for Control Data Corporation. In the early 1970s, he used those skills to join Chase Manhattan Bank as a project manager in data processing at a time when the computer industry was exploding and banks needed to automate to catch up. In data processing, you “get to know the bank from the bottom up better than anyone else in the bank,” Ryan said.
The banking hierarchy was changing at the time as well. It used to be that only Ivy League graduates ran the nation’s top banks, as David Rockefeller did at Chase Manhattan. That began to change in the 1980s. Opportunities opened up. Ryan rose through the ranks at Chase Manhattan, eventually becoming president in 1990.
“It starts with the old proverb ‘Be in the right place at the right time,’” said Ryan. “If things are changing and you have a certain skill, it is an opportunity you should not miss.”
On a visit to PC in December, Ryan was impressed with the campus. He is pleased that the Arthur and Patricia Ryan Center for Business Studies will be a jewel on the East Campus the way that the Ruane Center for the Humanities is on the West Campus.
The College has a much different look than it did in the early 1960s when Ryan was a student. In those days he was dating his wife, Pat. She accompanied him to campus socials and sporting events. The Ryans live in Florida now. They have four children, including Arthur W. Ryan ’89, and seven grandchildren.
Ryan also is pleased that the College will build a new stadium for lacrosse and soccer through the combined philanthropy of Karl Anderson ’88 and his wife, Kerry Fowley Anderson ’88, and Michael Chapey ’86 and his wife, Maura Hurley Chapey ’86, because of the popularity of those sports among suburban youth today.
“This is a multi-dimensional story, well executed in terms of the role of the business school, how the College will develop, and its linkage with other improvements on campus,” said Ryan. “It fits in with all that Pat and I support.”
