UNT teams up with Army and Air Force Exchange Service

UNT's School of Merchandising and Hospitality Management is the first in the nation to offer graduate merchandising certificates to Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) employees. AAFES operates retail stores on U.S. military bases around the world.

Dallas-based AAFES ranks 79th among the world's top 200 global retailers. Since 1895, the chain has offered familiar U.S. products to the nation's military personnel. AAFES is partly federally funded, and operated by the U.S. military, but its 55,000 employees are all civilians.

AAFES profits support programs for people in the service and their families. Also, as a federal entity, AAFES provides job-enhancing educational opportunities for all of its employees through AAFES Corps University.

AAFES Corps University sought out UNT's merchandising program because it's the first in the nation offered completely online. Federal regulations require that if AAFES offers educational opportunities to any of its employees, everyone must have access. This includes workers on bases as close as Texas or Oklahoma and as far away as Vietnam or Albania. UNT's online merchandising courses offer this worldwide access.

AAFES employees may earn graduate academic certificates in merchandising within a year by successfully completing four courses — Consumer Theory, Merchandising Strategies, Promotional Strategies and Concept Merchandising. The web-based courses offer interactive dialogue with industry experts and fellow classmates through forum discussions, real-time chats and learning modules.

BY RUFUS COLEMAN rcoleman@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue

• Price named System Center executive director
• More Teach to the Future funding announced
• Shrader appointed interim VP for development
• Merchandising, hospitality management dean fostering growth, cooperation with industry
• Sociologist studies use of self-managed work teams
• Geology trail is newest EESAT complex addition
• Journalism lab named for Fort Worth Star-Telegram editor
• UNT Athletics ticket packages for sale soon
• MC/PAIS moving this month
• Grandparents face special challenges when raising grandchildren
• UNT Psychology Clinic to offer group for children of divorced parents
• Elm Fork Education Center collecting plastic bottles, egg cartons for camp

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