LONGMEADOW – Founded in 1897, Bay Path University, located in Longmeadow, has been offering undergraduate degrees for women and graduate degrees for men and women for years. Recently, Niche.com ranked Bay Path University as the safest college campus in Massachusetts, as well as the third safest college campus in the United States.

Previously known as College Prowler, Niche.com is a ranking and review site that ranks places to live, K–12 schools, colleges, places to work and more. The website, “combines rigorous analysis with authentic reviews to highlight the best schools, companies and neighborhoods,” niche.com explains.

Going off of Bay Path’s Niche page, the school has a series of accomplishments: it’s ranked 20th in Best Online Colleges in America and 18th in the Best Women’s Colleges in America. The site continues to share the schools admissions rating, cost projections, academic information, majors, students demographics, campus life, after college information and reviews.

Following behind Bay Path’s #1 ranking for Safest Colleges in Massachusetts are Gordon College located in Wenham, and local College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee. Vice President for Finance and Administration at Bay Path Mike Giampietro explained that he believes Bay Path’s campus safety ranking is due to a combination of efforts.

“First, I think we’re very fortunate to be located where we are in Longmeadow, a very safe town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Giampietro told Reminder Publishing. “Second, I think we maintain a good working relationship with the Longmeadow Police Department. Third, we do focus on campus safety a lot.”

Giampietro shared that the school continually works on the overall safety of the campus to help ensure students feel safe.

“We maintain our grounds, particularly at the Longmeadow campus with safety in mind. We have enhanced our lighting on campus; we have emergency call boxes, routine building checks. Safety on the campus and our grounds in particular help to ensure a safe campus environment,” he said.

Out of 1,357 colleges in the United States that were ranked, Bay Path came in third place for campus safety, falling just behind Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, KY, and Molloy College in Rockville Centre, NY.

“I always like to say there’s never any guarantee, we always encourage students to be mindful but we do as much as we can to ensure safety,” Giampietro said. “We communicate to our students to ensure safety, we practice safety on a daily basis. We’re a relatively small campus; folks know each other, the employees, the faculty and the students. Safety is top of mind.”

Bay Path University is located at 588 Longmeadow St. in Longmeadow.