Brenau University prepares students for global marketplace

Since its beginning, Brenau University has extended the tradition of prestigious higher education, expanding from its historic original campus, continuously operated since 1878, onto the global stage through many innovative programs.

The internationally renowned and highly rated university, based in Gainesville, Georgia, in the southeastern United States, has a total enrollment of approximately 4,000 men and women in coeducational Bachelor's, Master’s, Specialist and Doctoral degrees in several locations in Georgia and Florida as well as throughout the world in its virtual classrooms. The warmly welcoming university’s programs are structured upon Brenau’s nationally acknowledged values of small class sizes, personal attention to individual students and reasonable costs.

Since the late 1980s Brenau University President Ed Schrader has developed relationships and partnerships with academic institutions around the world, particularly in China. Those efforts came to fruition for Brenau in mid-2014 with the approval of an agreement between Brenau University and Anhui Normal University for a joint degree program in early childhood teacher education. The "2+2 partnership" allows Chinese students to study two years at their home institution before transferring to Brenau for their final two years.

The partnership also provides abroad opportunities for American students and faculty exchanges from both institutions, which commenced in 2015. In May 2018, the first cohort of 2+2 students graduated with degrees from both Brenau and Anhui Normal, and this fall the university will have approximately 100 students from China and other Asian cultures. The ANU partnership now also includes joint degree programs in English and interior design. Currently an additional 125 students are enrolled in China preparing to attend Brenau in the future years. Over the same period Brenau faculty have accompanied over 40 American students to study abroad at ANU and the proximal area in Heifei, Anhui province.

"Brenau’s Chinese partnerships are transformative for both the international students who attend our university and our American students travelling to our partner country, for both benefit from a larger global perspective as they are prepared to better compete in a global marketplace and to help shape a better global society for all," said Schrader. "I am confident that the enduring relationships formed among our students, professors and administrators through our international partnerships will enrich all of our lives, our societies and our international relations."

Brenau offers a variety of very safe campus living options, from traditional residence halls to sorority houses to on-campus apartments. Most residence hall rooms are suite-style, where two students share one room together with a bathroom adjoining the two students in the next room. Students involved in Greek Life also have the option to live in their sorority house after their freshman year, and upperclassmen students have first choice of the apartment-style housing that is available.

Brenau is also home to the 140-year-old Women’s College, which continues to offer enriched single-gender undergraduate residential experiences. Brenau’s Women’s College provides a full slate of academic and extracurricular experiences. These activities include 15 nationally competitive sports, national sororities and honor societies, and outlets for artistic expression and community service. Brenau offers a uniquely relevant and inspiring education, one that will prepare students for a successful, 21st-century career, but also a life of deeper purpose and meaning.