On June 5, 1970, the Bryant Board of Trustees announced that it had chosen Harry Evarts, a full professor and dean at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, to be Bryant's next president. Evarts, who earned a doctorate in business administration from Harvard in 1959, formerly had been an assistant professor of production management at Northwestern University. He received his Master of Science and undergraduate degree from Ohio University.

In 1960 Evarts was a consultant to educators and businessmen in Japan on the subject of production control. In the early 1970s, he taught advanced management to executives in Kenya and Zambia. Evarts was the author of the book Introduction to PERT and numerous journal articles.

President Evarts assumed his duties at Bryant on September 1, 1970.

In 1971 Evarts helped facilitate Bryant's move from the East Side of Providence to Smithfield. Bryant's Center for Management Development, currently called the Executive Development Center, was instituted under Evarts' leadership.

Harry F. Evarts passed away on March 6, 2011 in Polson, Montana.