New Grant Opportunity for Medical Assisting Program at Bryant & Stratton College

Jeff Tredo, Director of Bryant & Stratton College’s Western New York and Rochester campuses, highlighted the success of their fall semester, including a 15% rise in new enrollments and the launch of a Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. He also talks about a new grant opportunity for prospective students interested in our medical assisting program, along with exciting athletic updates, including hosting the USCAA Division I basketball championships in Buffalo.

Transcript:

Now, I know it’s Saturday, but that doesn’t mean we cannot spend a little time this morning on school. Promise no homework, and we’re sure you’re going to know more about Bryan Stratton College’s medical assistant program than you did before today, because joining me right now is their director of Western New York and Rochester campuses, Jeff Tredo, from Bryan Stratton College. Jeff, thanks for being here.

Good to see you again. Thanks for having me, Kevin. Good to see you as well.

We’re going to talk about the medical assistant program in just a second, but we’re wrapping up the fall semester. How’s everything going? Yeah, we had another really good fall term. As you remember, a year ago, we had year-over-year growth in new and total enrollment.

We were able to repeat that again in 2024, saw a 15% increase in new enrollments, an 11% increase in total enrollments. Our new bachelor of science in nursing program helped with that new enrollment growth, so we had our first cohort start in the fall, and currently, they’re all still continuing through the semester, so retention was good. The total enrollments speak to the fact that we had a really good year with student persistence, so students who started stuck with it and are still here working towards their degrees.

That’s great to hear, and I remember you joining us about the nursing program that was starting and the interest that was there, and I expect we’re going to have a lot of interest in this next thing we’re going to talk about, because you do have a new grant program. We do. For students interested in the medical assistant field. Tell us about it.

Yeah, so I’m really excited to be participating in this program. It can provide funding to students who are interested in becoming medical assistants, and it will gap fund their education, so after aid and scholarships are applied, this grant will help cover all the remaining costs of tuition, books, and fees.

It doesn’t cover room and board, but for a student who’s looking to come into the medical assistant program, maybe doesn’t want to take out a lot of student loan, doesn’t want to have heavy cash payment, this could be a program for them. It does have a work commitment at the end for those who participate in it. They have to work in that field for three years, but the majority of students who come to us for medical assistant are planning to be medical assistants, so we’re really excited.

The program is just launching this week. And what does a medical assistant do? Yeah, really good question. So a medical assistant is a multi-skilled healthcare professional that can work in a variety of settings, hospital, doctor’s office, outpatient clinic, and they will handle both administrative as well as clinical duties there, depending on the site.

So it could be everything from checking patients in, handling patient records, taking vital signs, assisting with exams, maybe minor surgeries. So it’s a really good field because it’s varied, right? Every day isn’t the same. Is there a high demand for this field? There is great demand, and that’s part of the reason why this grant program got created, was to help address that shortfall.

As we know, we’re all aging, and so a lot of people have heard, you know, nurses being in high demand. Medical assistants are in that same area, and so there is high demand for it, and we’re really excited to be able to offer the program. All right, we’ll get a lot of information now, folks can inquire about it, but I didn’t want to end this without asking about the athletic programs, how they do this well.

So they did well, and I am really excited to announce that we just formed the first-ever Division I conference within the USCAA. So the conference was formed by seven schools, Brandon Stratton has four of those, Villa Maria College, Five Towns College, and Berkeley College out of New York. So we have formed a new Division I conference, and Buffalo will be hosting the national championships in men’s and women’s basketball, both in 25 and 26, they’re going to be held at Villa Maria, but we’re really excited that they’re coming to town, and hopeful that you’ll see our teams playing there.

All right, well congratulations on that. So much happening at Bryan and Stratton College, they have three campus locations in our area, which are Orchard Park, Amherst, and Buffalo, and to find out more about all the degrees and programs they offer, including the medical assistant program and the grant program, head to their website at bryanstratton.edu, there you’ll find all the information you need to apply to the college. And a friendly reminder that classes start back up on January 15th, so hop to it!