Thank you for your interest in becoming an Approved Retail Management Certificate Partner College. By offering the WAFC endorsed Retail Management Certificate you are able to provide your students with the core competencies defined by industry as the most relevant and focused for success as a retail manager.
Students enrolled in this program receive two certificates, one from your community or junior college, and one from the Western Association of Food Chains (WAFC).
Getting Started
To become an Approved Partner College we ask that all colleges meet the following criteria:
- Be an accredited community or junior college located in the United States.
- Currently offer or be willing to create a Retail Management Certificate program for academic credit.
- Meet the industry-approved competencies and course outcomes through a series of 8-9 courses.
- Attend bi-annual Retail Management Certificate Consortium advisory meetings in your state (optional).
- Award a Community College Certificate of Certificate of Achievement to students successfully completing the program.
- Recognize many of the students in the Retail Management Certificate program are working adults and course format and scheduling should reflect that.
Once you have reviewed and met the approved college criteria you are ready to complete the application process.
Become an Approved College:
With the goal of providing our workforce with the most relevant and comprehensive education experience, a set core competencies linked to student outcomes was developed, and then revalidated and revised in 2013 by a panel of industry representatives and community college faculty.
- Begin to solicit or garner support for launching a new certificate from your college leadership. Check our college toolkit for statistics, reports, and presentation materials to support your case. Identify possible retailers in your community for cohort opportunities.
- Please review the competencies and complete the curriculum crosswalk form to determine where your college is in relation to meeting the curriculum requirements and confirm that your courses are available for college credit. View a complete list of competencies.
- Save the completed curriculum crosswalk as a PDF, and sent it along with a list of the proposed course titles & course numbers as well as course descriptions to rmc@wafc.com.
- Once received, one of our team members will follow-up with you to discuss next steps for launching your program.